ZEfoe xaniversitp of Gbicago 

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 



THE CONCEPTION OF A KINGDOM OF 

ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, 

AND LEIBNIZ 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS 

AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE 

OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

(DEPARTMENT OF philosophy) 



BY ' 

ELLA HARRISON STOKES 



THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 



THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 

Bgents 
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 

NEW YORK 

THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON AND EDINBURGH 



Ube XHnfversitE of Cbicago 

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 



THE CONCEPTION OF A KINGDOM OF 

ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, 

AND LEIBNIZ 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS 

AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE 

OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

(department of philosophy) 



BY 

ELLA HARRISON STOKES 




THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 



c*vv 



Copyright 1912 By 
The University of Chicago 



All Rights Reserved 



Published November 1012 



The UniTeralfcy 
6 DEC 1912 



Composed and Printed By 

The University of Chicago Press 

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 



^\ 

** % \ 

^ 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

IAPTER 

I. Introduction 



II. Augustine and the "City op God" 3 

I. General Political and Social Situation in the Roman Empire in 
the Age of Augustine, (i) Political Situation. (2) Economic Conditions. 

(3) Religious Conditions. (4) The Educational Outlook. (5) Augus- 
tine's Statement of Conditions, and a Summary of Problems. 

II. Civitas Dei and Kindred Conceptions. (1) The Early and Later 
Jewish Conception. (2) The Early Christian Conception. (3) The Greek 
and Roman Conception of the City of Zeus. (4) Augustine's Civitas Dei 
et Terrena Civitas. 

III. General Purpose of the Universe and the Origin of the Two Cities. 
(1) Why the World Was Created. (2) The Original Citizens of the Two 
Cities. (3) The Sub-Human World. 

IV. Psychical Factors and Their Moral Value. (1) Will, Emotion, 
and Intellect and Their Interrelations. (2) Desires and Their Moral 
Value. (3) Love of Self, of Others, and of God. 

V. Value of Social and Religious Institutions and Agencies. (1) The 
Family. (2) The School and Education. (3) Celibacy and Monasticism. 

(4) The State. (5) The Church: Its Authority and Sacraments. (6) 
Special Religious Instrumentalities. 

VI. The Life after Death and the Final Goal. (1) The Intermediate 
State. (2) The End of Babylon. (3) Life in the Celestial Jerusalem. 

VII. The Value of Augustine's Conception of the City of God. 

III. Aquinas and the Universal Church 43 

I. Important Changes from the Fifth to the Thirteenth Century. 

(1) Political and Economic Changes. (2) The Church and the New 
Monasticism. (3) The Universities and the New Philosophy. (4) The 
New Situation in Ethics. 

II. Ends and the Supreme End. (1) The Teleology of the Universe. 

(2) Nature and Early History of Intellectual Creatures. (3) The Infra- 
Human Realm. 

III. Psychical Factors and Their Interrelation. (1) Will and Intellect. 
(2) The Will, Impulse, and Emotion. (3) The Nature and Value of 
Habit. (4) The Freedom of the Will. (5) The Desire for and the Nature 
of Happiness. (6} Love of Self and of Other Selves. 

IV. Social Agencies in the Kingdom of Nature and in the Kingdom of 
God. (1) The Family. (2) Monastic Life. (3) The State: Its Origin, 



IV TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Form, and Rulers. (4) Positive Law and Natural Law. (5) The Church 
as World State. (6) Relation of Divinely Revealed Law to Natural and 
to Positive Law. (7) Authority of the Church and of Reason. (8) The 
Sacraments. (9) The Virtues. 

V. The Dualism of Contemplation and Action. 

VI. The Supernatural End. 

VII. General Criticism. 

IV. Leibniz and the Kingdom of Grace 77 

I. New Worlds and New Problems. (1) The New World of Physical 
Science. (2) The New Organic World. (3) The New World of Human 
Life. (4) Summary of Problems. 

II. Origin and Purpose of the Kingdom of Grace. (1) How the World 
Came into Being. (2) The Two Kingdoms. (3) Why the World Came 
into Being. (4) The Relation of the Human Spirit to Its Body. (5) 
Teleological Continuity and Man's Place in the Universe. 

III. The Psychology of the Kingdom of Grace. (1) General Relation 
of Intellect, Feeling, and Will. (2) How Moral Freedom Is Possible. (3) 
Pleasure and Pain, and Their Moral Values. (4) Passion and Confused 
Thought. (5) The Problem of Disinterested Love. 

IV. Natural Societies and Natural Right. (1) The Family, Slavery, 
and the Household. (2) The Structure and Function of the State. (3) 
Jus Naturale and Its Three Principles. (4) The First Two Degrees 
of Justice. (5) The Church as a Natural Society and the Higher Justice. 
(6) The Relation of the Church to the State. 

V. The Old and the New Contemplation. 

VI. Future Life and Progress. 

VII. General Criticism of Leibniz' Conception. 

V. Summary and Statement of Relation to Kant . .115 

I. Problems and Solutions. 

II. General Advance. 

III. Relation of Earlier Conceptions to That of Kant. 

Bibliography 128 



CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 

Every age has its prophets of a new and better moral order. They 
are usually men of marked individuality, with a vision and message 
uniquely their own. This we do not deny in affirming that the vision, 
though seen in some lonely Patmos, and the message, though heard in 
the isolation of a monk's cell or of a philosopher's study, are social both 
in their origin and in their purpose. It is only because the prophet is 
keenly alive to social needs and interests that the defects of the existing 
order are so clearly perceived by him, and that he strives to find remedial 
measures. 

The vision of a new and better moral order comes at a time when not 
only the moral theorist, but also the community to which he belongs, 
have become aware that the old order no longer serves its original pur- 
pose in securing the social welfare. Customs and laws once adequate 
are no longer so. Bonds that held society together are badly strained 
or perhaps broken, and in some departments of social life anarchy is 
imminent. This the common man may see, but the moral theorist 
perceives it much more clearly because he sees it in relation to its causes 
and to their removal. His is the vision without which the people perish. 

It is at just such crises in the social order that the various conceptions 
of a kingdom of ends which we propose to study have been formulated. 
They have come as a response to specific needs in the social body, and 
for a time at least they have really met those needs. 

We shall attempt no exact definition of the phrase " kingdom of ends." 
It usually refers to a community whose purpose is the completest possible 
moral development of its members. Its scope is wide enough to include 
all rational beings, no one of whom, not even its divine Founder, may 
treat another as a mere means. 

It is quite conceivable that men should be regarded as members of 
a kingdom of ends though their period of development were regarded as 
limited to life in the present world. In fact some of the Stoics had just 
such a conception. They accepted with resignation the thought of 
cessation of existence at death, and made no further demands upon the 
universe. They have had successors in every age and still have them. 
This, however, is not the attitude of the philosophers whose works we 



2 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

shall treat. To them the thought that moral development may termi- 
nate with death is appalling. Man is regarded as an end in himself 
largely on account of his unlimited possibilities, and for this reason 
lower forms of life may be sacrificed for his welfare, and all higher beings 
are under bonds, as it were, to treat him with kindness and justice. 

Means are just as necessary to the attainment of ends of infinite 
worth as in the case of the most commonplace ends. " Car dans le total 
les moyens font une partie de la fin," is the sentiment expressed by one 
of our authors. 1 In the description of means leading to the desired goal, 
given by each author more or less definitely, we shall find better than any 
formal definition can tell us what was really meant by a kingdom of ends 
and by the synonymous phrases "City of God" and " Kingdom of 
Grace." 

The paper which follows is a study of the conception of a kingdom of 
ends as presented by Augustine, Aquinas, and Leibniz, and the relation 
of these conceptions to that of Kant. In the case of each author studied 
there will be an attempt to answer the following questions, the first of 
which is in the main historical, the second metaphysical, the third and 
fourth psychological and ethical, and the fifth ethical. They are: 

i. What was the immediate situation which demanded a new state- 
ment of moral relations and thus led to this particular conception of a 
kingdom of ends ? 

2. Does the author's general conception of the universe permit or 
favor such a kingdom of ends, and make it possible or probable that the 
ideal involved in it will ever be realized ? 

3. Does he regard men as so constituted that they can become active 
and patriotic members of such a kingdom ? 

4. What is the author's valuation of social institutions already 
existing with respect to such citizenship, and if their modification is 
necessary what direction should it take ? 

5. What advance is noticeable in the conception beyond previous 
conceptions and what are its most striking defects ? 

The writer acknowledges great obligation to Professor James H. 
Tufts, under whose supervision this work was prepared. Her gratitude 
is also due to Professor T. G. Duvall, of Ohio Wesleyan University, and 
to Professors A. W. Moore, G. H. Mead, J. R. Angell, and E. S. Ames, 
of the University of Chicago, for guidance in the devious paths of phi- 
losophy and psychology. 

1 Gerhardt, Leibniz 1 Werke, I, 360. 



CHAPTER II 

AUGUSTINE AND THE "CITY OF GOD" 

I. GENERAL POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SITUATION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE 
IN THE AGE OF AUGUSTINE 

(i) Political situation. — The attitude of Augustine toward the 
political state, though often presented in an exaggerated light, was 
really in many respects striking. In order to judge him fairly in the 
matter a rather full statement of the political situation of his period 
seems advisable. 

As we study the history of the period we are likely to infer that the 
citizens of the Roman empire must have lived in constant dread because 
the empire was so evidently tottering to its fall. The truth however is 
that they had become accustomed to ominous tremors and usually the 
distress felt was only local and temporary. In the hearts of some there 
existed a blind faith that the eternal city was destined to remain the 
center of an almost world-wide dominion. This faith was not coupled 
with ardent patriotism. There was but little interest in political affairs. 
In fact, the body politic wasted away so slowly and gradually that the 
hour of its death cannot be determined with certainty. 

Though historians hesitate to fix an exact date for the death of the 
empire they generally agree that long before its demise extreme political 
and social confusion prevailed. The empire nominally one was prac- 
tically two, and the people of the East and West were rapidly becoming 
alienated from each other. In the West, Ravenna not Rome was 
usually the seat of imperial power. There were revolts in Britain, Gaul, 
Spain, and Africa. Ostrogoths and Visigoths, Suevi and Alans, Huns 
and Alamanni, Vandals and Moors pressed in upon the empire, some- 
times content with plundering the outskirts, sometimes penetrating to 
its very center. The sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 aroused unusual 
excitement and terror. It was the event which gave the pagans an 
opportunity to assert that Rome could not survive without her guardian 
gods and to plead for the restoration of the old religion, as well as to 
declare that the precepts of Christianity were not consistent with 
Roman citizenship. These objections brought Augustine's problem to 
vivid consciousness but by no means furnished its whole content. The 
treatise De Civitate Dei deals with these charges. 

3 



4 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

Most of the barbarian invaders sought a home rather than plunder. 
A hundred thousand of them were admitted Sisfoederati in 376 but two 
years later, provoked by injustice, they revolted, and the eastern emperor 
met defeat and death at their hands. Often large numbers of barbarians 
entered the army, coming in from captivity, or as mercenary soldiers, or 
as foederati. Some of them soon won their way to the highest military 
offices, even to the consulship itself. Without these barbarian troops 
many Roman victories would have been impossible, for the native born 
Romans had lost their former military zeal, but, on the other hand, 
troops trained to fight with the legions knew well how to fight against 
them. In the households of the wealthy innumerable Gothic and 
Scythian slaves were found, and many of the tillers of the soil were 
German. If all of Rome's rulers had been just, and her administrators 
of government honest it may well be questioned whether it would have 
been possible to bind together in a living unity so many races scattered 
over so vast a range of territory, without a representative system and 
means of intercommunication unknown at that day. With the existing 
government it was clearly impossible. 

(2) Economic conditions. — It is generally conceded that the empire 
suffered more from internal maladies than from the enemy on the 
borderland. The former left her helpless against the latter. A bureau- 
cratic system at the head of which was the emperor as the sole source 
of law had crushed out the earlier political life. Taxation, necessarily 
heavy in order to support imperial courts and large armies, was rendered 
especially burdensome by unscientific methods of assessment and col- 
lection. Its weight fell upon the curiales, the middle class upon whose 
strength the very life of the nation depended. The law not only 
oppressed this class but it made it the oppressor of the classes beneath 
it. In many directions the curiales sought escape from their unhappy 
condition. Some entered the army, others the clergy, a few of the 
wealthier obtained senatorial rank, some voluntarily sank to the level of 
coloni and slaves, and still others surrendered their land to their richer 
neighbors and received it again under a sort of feudal tenure. Soon 
severe laws were enacted to prevent the curiales escaping from their 
burdens. Everywhere there was a marked tendency to transform class 
into caste and to bind the son to the occupation of the father. In the 
larger cities the free "bread and circus" of Juvenal's time were still 
furnished to the populace at the expense of the state, or of great public 
officials, thus perpetuating economic parasitism and paralyzing the 
primitive virtues, but these two " indispensables " were no longer 
sufficient. Free wine and oil had been added. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE 'CITY OF GOD 5 

At times the emperors saw and deplored the miseries of the common 
people, and the fact that the rich were becoming richer while the poor 
were becoming poorer. The character and frequency of the imperial 
"thou shalt not's" reveal the deplorable lack of a sense of duty in the 
administrators of government. Imperial efforts to change conditions 
however proved ineffective, and the emperors were unable to control the 
vast bureaucratic machine which they themselves had set in motion. 
The aristocratic classes though deprived of direct political power, by 
means of social influence, bribes, and terror really controlled the admin- 
istration. Under such conditions the old Roman resistance to foreign 
foes could scarcely be expected. 

(3) Religious conditions. — By no means all of the people of the 
empire had accepted Christianity. Many loved the old religion and 
struggled hard to retain its public rites. These were celebrated in the 
city of Rome up to and at times during the last decade of the fourth 
century, but not without interruption and legal limitation. Outside of 
the city they were maintained even longer, and many thought their 
suppression would destroy the foundations of the empire, not clearly 
perceiving that its political and economic foundations were already 
crumbling, or, if they perceived it, they thought it could avail nothing 
to discuss it. In the higher ranks of pagan society there existed a sort 
of patriotism but its eye was turned to the golden past rather than to 
the future. The oratory of the earlier period was much admired and 
imitated so far as could be done in an entirely different situation. Men 
tried in vain to catch the vigor of thought and expression of the classic 
period. No doubt in some cases this devotion to the classics served to 
refine and purify social life, and to make men nobler in all their social 
relations, but in general the higher classes had no deeper interest in the 
welfare of the lower, and were conspicuous for greed, luxury, and cruel 
oppression of the poor. 

Social life within the church did not present a wholly pleasing 
picture. The spotless morality of the earlier periods, with unceasing 
protest against every pagan vice, was not marked in many later converts 
whose acceptance of the Christian faith was largely a matter of following 
the crowd. To such the new religion like the old was mainly a matter 
of external observances. A recent theologian claims that Constantine, 
seeing that Rome had lost its distinctly Roman character and ceased to 
be a national state, in the hope of establishing a universal religious state 
accepted and legalized the Christian religion because he saw that it was 
superior to any institution in his realm in its organization and unity. 



6 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNEZ 

However this may be it is evident that after emperors began to grant to 
the church the aid of the secular power less emphasis was placed on the 
use of Pauline weapons. The deep reflection and weighing of values 
which preceded an acceptance of the Christian faith in times of perse- 
cution, and the resultant moral strength could not be expected in those 
who followed the multitude in entering the church. In some cases they 
were quite as ready to follow it to the circus and gladiatorial combat, 
the corrupters of public morals. 

To overcome this tendency to laxity of morals on the part of some of 
its members it was in many places the custom to exclude all who were 
guilty of grosser vices from the most sacred rites of the church. Over 
against moral laxity on the part of some, severe asceticism on the part 
of others manifested itself. Concentration of attention upon the 
negation of natural instincts sometimes resulted in their affirmation. 
Many, however, who put themselves under monastic restrictions really 
kept their vows and were splendidly efficient in the service of their 
fellow-men. Much emphasis was placed on works of charity, a virtue 
which certainly needed cultivation in this period. 

(4) The educational outlook. — At first sight it might appear that the 
schools of the empire in Augustine's day gave promise of help to the 
nation. Never had they been more flourishing in respect to number and 
to the provision made for their support. But educational effort was 
directed rather toward a glorification of the past than to such direction 
of the activities of the Roman people as the needs of the time demanded. 
The rhetorical schools were falling far short of their ideal, the production 
of the orator who must also be a good man, if by goodness efficiency in 
serving his fellows is meant. They gave excellent instructions as to 
form but could furnish their students with no vital message. The 
school of philosophy at Athens was still in existence but its influence was 
very small. "The present subjects of controversy are the heresies 
within the church" says Augustine in a letter to Dioscurus describing the 
condition of philosophy in the empire, "and the Greek philosophers 
are neglected." 

(5) Augustine's statement of conditions, and a summary of problems. — 
We have seen why the social and the political life of Augustine's time 
may have appeared very unsatisfactory to him. Scattered through his 
works there may be found direct or indirect statements showing that in 
many respects they really were so. He says that the liberties of the 
republic were lost when Augustus assumed the imperial office, but social 
discord had rendered them valueless long before this. Love of domina- 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 7 

tion had vitiated the Roman love of liberty, and as a result people of 
many races were forced together in a union which though not wholly 
bad was a very doubtful good. The very extent of the empire, made 
possible at a terrible cost of blood and slaughter, produced wars of a yet 
more obnoxious description — social and civil — and the end of miseries 
had not yet come. The ideal republic where perfect justice was admin- 
istered to all never had existed and never could exist in perfect form on 
earth though among Christians it might approximately be realized, and 
x n early Rome it had been much more nearly realized than at present, 
for her citizens possessed virtues such as industry, frugality, and temper- 
ance in striking contrast with the idleness, luxury, and lust of later Rome. 
Her statesmen too had possessed virtues which although not worthy to 
be called virtues under the Christian standard were yet splendid faults 
which crushed out baser faults and served to bring about a common good 
in the earthly state. The Gracchi were right in attempting to divide 
the lands among the people, but the nobles had so long possessed them 
wrongfully that the abuse could not be corrected, and an attempt to do 
so only brought destruction to those who made it. The pagan religion 
undermined the virtues necessary for wholesome social life. The pagan 
philosophers afforded no sufficient remedy. Epicureanism led to 
further degradation. Stoicism was powerless to reach the masses and 
in its protests against emotion denied an element essential to human life. 
Academic skepticism was of negative value as combating the material- 
ism of Epicurean and Stoic but could itself afford no positive relief since 
its advocates could not present their own spiritualistic views with a voice 
of authority to the people until the minds of the latter could be brought 
to a level where they could understand. Of the neo-Platonists some had 
laid aside minor inconsistencies, and recognized in Christ the imper- 
sonation of that essential Truth and Wisdom which they sought. Others 
had been corrupted by curious inquiries into magic. Christianity alone 
could afford a living bond of unity to the people, furnish proper motiva- 
tion for the moral life, and give an outlook into the future life. 

Summing up, we find that the problem which Augustine had to face 
was the breaking down of the old moral order which had been so largely 
state-centered that it could not survive the disintegration of the empire 
and the downfall of the pagan religion. This he felt must be replaced 
by a new moral order based on the Christian religion and centered in a 
state with indestructible foundations. It was the task of convincing the 
world that the Christian religion, regarded by many as local and temporal 
in its significance, was really beyond all temporal and spatial limitations. 



8 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

To present it in this doubly universal light there was none so well fitted 
by virtue of general philosophic knowledge, wide acquaintance with the 
most cultured thought of the day, rhetorical training, and intense moral 
earnestness as Augustine, bishop of Hippo. 

II. "CIVrTAS DEl" AND KINDRED CONCEPTIONS 

(i) The early and later Jewish conception. — The phrase "City of 
God" had an interesting history long before Augustine used it. It was 
employed by both the Hebrews and Greeks and also by the Romans, 
but with considerable variation in meaning. In fact within the literature 
of each of these peoples the concept varied greatly, both in extension 
and intension, becoming much richer in later days. To these earlier 
conceptions no doubt Augustine owed much, yet his own has unique 
elements and was destined to have a larger influence in directing future 
events than any preceding conception. 

As employed in its narrowest sense, and presumably in the earliest 
period of its use, the phrase " City of God" meant to the Jew the actual 
city of Jerusalem viewed as the center of political power, and as especially 
sacred to the God of Israel. It is the city "whither the tribes go up" 1 
and within whose walls the Lord of hosts deigns to dwell in his holy 
tabernacle, commanding the observance of justice and brotherly kindness 
within the nation, and defending his people against external foes. 
Though Jehovah is represented as controlling nature forces and as Lord 
of the whole earth Jerusalem is not pictured by early seers as the center 
of a universal kingdom. It is enough that it should be secure against 
foreign foes. The negative relation to foreign peoples is only slightly 
modified, so as to secure for the peaceful stranger who came within the 
gates hospitable treatment. 

It is quite probable that even in pre-exilic times the Jewish con- 
ception of the city of God and its place among the nations broadened. 
It most certainly did so, and in a very striking way, after the exile. To 
the Jew, Jerusalem even though fallen was great. It was the home land 
to which he longed to return, and to which, when the sins of the people 
should be atoned for, he hoped to be restored. 3 Jehovah would surely 
bring his ransomed people back to Mt. Zion and establish his throne 
among them. 3 But his kingdom was not to be of the same isolated 
character as before, though Jerusalem was still to be the city of the God 
of Jacob. Other nations should bring their treasures into it, and men 

1 Ps. 122. 

3 Isa., chap. 6i. 3 Isa., chaps. 51, 52 f. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE "CITY OF GOD" 0, 

were to come from distant lands to worship in its temple, now a place 
of prayer for all peoples. 1 Out of Zion the law should go forth, and 
judgment should be given between distant peoples until the nations 
should cease to learn war and everlasting peace should prevail. 2 

The development which caused the city of God to appear as the great 
center of a world religion is no more striking than that which took place 
with respect to the kind of service demanded by Jehovah. Sacrifice and 
ceremony still have a place but it is a secondary one. Obedience is 
declared to be better than sacrifice; the true fast is to cease from sin; 
to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God are the 
essential things. Jerusalem is to become a city of righteousness; lying, 
deceit, and every form of vice are to be laid aside. The law is to be no 
longer external but within men's hearts, and the dwelling-place of God 
not in builded houses but in the contrite soul. Hereditary penalties 
shall no longer exist. Only the soul that sins shall die, and this is not 
for the pleasure of Jehovah, whose wish is that the sinner may turn 
from his sin and live. 3 

(2) The early Christian conception. — When we pass to the New 
Testament the development still goes on. The earthly Jerusalem was 
still civitas magni regis 4 in a sense, but it refused to receive the place of 
leadership in a spiritual kingdom and rejected those who proclaimed it. 
The messengers of this inner kingdom of which the prophets had spoken 
went forth from the traditional religious center, in some cases forced 
forth by violence, to proclaim the gospel of salvation to all nations, 
organizing men in a society which should bind them together in universal 
brotherhood on earth, and should bring them into organic relation 
with a yet more universal society. Thus their attention was turned 
toward another city "the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the innumerable 
hosts of angels, to the general assembly of the church of the firstborn 
whose names are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all the 
earth, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the 
mediator of a new covenant." 5 This now became the true "city with 
foundations" for which all the ages had looked, the city prepared for 
the saints. 6 In Augustine's native tongue it was the sancta civitas of the 
apocalyptic vision, open to men of every race and class for an eternal 

1 Zech., chap. 8. 2 Isa., chaps. 55, 56; Mia, chap. 4. 

sMic. 6:6-8; Isa. 68:5-10; Amos, chap. 5; Zech. 8:16-17, 21-25; Zeph. 3:13; 
Ezek., chap. 18; Jer. 3j:3°-35- 
4 Matt. 5:35. 
s Heb. 11:10. 6 Heb. 12:22. 



IO A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

dwelling-place, provided only that they were free from moral defilement. 1 
Here alone fulness of life is to be found. This conception Augustine 
adopts as his own, elaborating it greatly however, and bringing in some 
elements from the Greek and Roman conceptions of the city of Zeus or 
universal state. 

(3) The Greek and Roman conception of the city of Zeus. — Among the 
Greeks we find Plato holding that a conception of an ideal city has 
power to transform and mold the life of him who beholds the heavenly 
vision. 3 This thought of transformation of moral character through 
vision or contemplation receives very great emphasis in the Christian 
conception of the city of God. 

The Cynics had a conception of a world citizenship, a phrase often 
used later as equivalent to citizenship in the city of Zeus. Their con- 
ception was largely negative, standing mainly for independence of the 
existing social and political order, for these no longer commanded respect. 

Among the Stoics the positive side receives more emphasis. Zeno 
said that men should not live in cities and demes distinguished by 
different codes but should regard all men as fellow-citizens and demesmen. 
Seneca spoke of the world as his native city; its governor as the gods. 3 
Epictetus found the political state too small a sphere for the wise man. 
He is the minister of Zeus and cannot condescend to talk about revenues 
and supplies, peace and war. Man by virtue of his reason is a citizen 
of the world and a son of God. 4 To Marcus Aurelius the world is the 
"lovely city of Zeus." The end of rational animals is to follow reason, 
the law of the most ancient city. Elsewhere he speaks of the highest 
city, the great state, the political community to which the whole human 
race belongs. 5 

Neo-Platonism, too, had its city of God, its beloved fatherland to 
which the soul must flee, and for which the only means of flight was in 
becoming like God. 

To both Greeks and Romans who talked of the city of Zeus the 
political state and much of the existing social order was felt to be but an 
imperfect and incomplete expression of man's nature, and in some 
respects a positive hindrance to a higher type of life. An internal bond 
of unity was sought, one removed as far as possible from temporal and 
spatial limitations and capable of binding man to his fellow-man uni- 

1 Rev. 21 : 2-16; 22 : 19. 2 Plato Republic ix. 591, 592. 

3 Seneca Epistolae morales xcv; De vita beata xx; De otio iii, iv. 

* Epictetus, Discourses, I, 9; III, 22. 

s Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, III, 11; IV, 4, 19; XI, 7; XII, 27. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD II 

versally. This was found to consist in the possession of a common 
rational nature. 

(4) Augustine's "Civitas Dei et Terrena Civitas." — In many of 
Augustine's treatises he makes a very free use of the conception of the 
city of God, and one epoch-making work is devoted exclusively to its 
consideration. Augustine defines a state or civitas as an assemblage of 
reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the 
object of their love. 1 Hence the bond of agreement in the city of God 
will be the love of God. The exact significance of the phrase Civitas Dei 
must however be gathered from the context in which it occurs. Some- 
times it refers to a city-state neither in this world nor of it, yet vitally 
related to it. This may be called the heavenly Jerusalem. At other 
times a city on earth is meant, a pilgrim city whose members are destined 
to come into perfect citizenship in the'heavenly city when their pilgrimage 
is ended. A third meaning includes both of the above, the church 
militant and the church triumphant. A fourth is that of the historic 
visible church on earth, not all of whose members can attain heavenly 
citizenship for some do the things which exclude entrance into it. It is 
notable that Augustine, except in so far as his adoption of the Hebrew 
history makes it necessary, does not represent any city on earth as 
peculiarly the city of God or center of the church. Jerusalem is always 
essentially "a city that is built as a state," i.e., as built of living stones 
— a community of persons. 2 

One cannot understand Augustine's conception of the city of God or 
appreciate the dualism with which he struggled without a glimpse at 
another city which he places in strong contrast with it. Terrena civitas 
in its broadest sense refers to the whole society of human beings whose 
hearts are centered on love of self or of earthly things. Taken together 
with the wicked spirits under whose domination these earth lovers live 
they constitute Babylon, city of confusion and of souls who are captives 
of sin. The spiritual Babylon will cease to be a city when the final 
judgment is pronounced against it, but its citizens are doomed as indi- 
viduals to suffer everlasting punishment or eternal dying. In a narrower 
sense terrena civitas may refer to some particular group of the earth- 
loving society, bound together in civic relation of some form, such as the 
city of Cain, or ancient Babylon, or "Rome as it were another Babylon 
in the West." In this sense it may include members of the heavenly 
city who, though having much in common with its members, are dis- 
tinguished by higher interests, and are not truly of it. 

1 The City of God, XIX, 24. 2 Expositions on the Psalms, 122. 



12 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

III. GENERAL PURPOSE OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE 

TWO CITIES 

(i) Why the world was created. — The general purpose of the whole 
created universe, including angels, men, and the sub-human world, was 
that good works might be done by an infinitely righteous Supreme 
Being, whose existence is eternal. The divine plan is that all rational 
beings must realize some good. This is not contradicted by any penalty 
placed upon the wicked for just punishment is good. Elsewhere 
Augustine speaks less positively concerning the divine purpose. Of his 
own goodness God made man, the first without sin, all others under sin, 
for the purpose of his own profound thoughts. This last sentence may 
suggest that self-realization is not the goal of man, and that he merely 
exists for the pleasure of the divine being, but Augustine's general view 
forbids such an interpretation, and in one of his treatises he deals specifi- 
cally with this problem. ' 'Does God use us or enjoy us ?" If he enjoys 
us, that would imply he is in need of good from us, hence it must be that 
he uses us, but he uses us not after the sense of our using. "The use which 
he makes of us has no reference to his own advantage but to ours only." 1 
In the sense then that man cannot be used as a mere means to some 
other end, he is an end in himself. Yet in another sense it is the very 
quintessence of evil for a man to regard himself as an end in himself, for 
he can attain self-realization only in and through God. Self-sufficiency 
is the original sin, and this Augustine ceases not to emphasize. 

Thus over against the traditional eternal city Rome, Augustine points 
to a city with eternal foundations in the plan of an eternal God. The 
dignity of man is recognized in that he can be used only for his own 
advantage. We may find Augustine has difficulty in holding true to 
this view. In "self-sufficiency as the original sin," Augustine gives us 
a glimpse of his central thought: God is the bond which links man to 
man in mutually helpful relations, and without which neither individual 
nor society can find adequate development. We find statements more 
definitely asserting the original liberty, equality, and fraternity of the 
city of God. "God did not intend that his rational creature should 
have dominion over anything but the irrational creation; not man over 
man but man over beasts." 2 Woman was made from man's body and 
man from dust "so that all might be derived from one and learn to 
preserve unity." Elsewhere he asks, "How could the city of God ever 

1 On Christian Doctrine, I, 32. 

3 The City of God, XII, 21; XIX, 15. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 1 3 

begin, or develop, or attain its proper destiny unless the life of the saints 
were a social life P" 1 

(2) The original citizens of the two cities. — As the angels play so 
important a part in the two cities and have so much in common with 
man a few words must be said about their origin, nature, and relation 
to the world of humanity. They were created good, but mutable, since 
created out of nothing. At first they dwelt together in harmony, and 
. there was but one city, but soon pride crept in, and some began to live 
for self and thus ceased to participate in God the source of their strength. 
Hitherto free to do good or evil they were henceforth free only to do evil, 
and were cast out from the holy city to form the nucleus of the spiritual 
Babylon for which eternal punishment is reserved. Their loss of moral 
rectitude entailed considerable loss of, mental power as well, hence they 
are distinctly inferior to the good angels who never lost their first estate. 
From the first, or after a brief period of probation, the good angels 
received the assurance that they should never be expatriated. Their 
wills were fixed in righteousness and their nature now so agrees with the 
eternal law that they are without temptation. Their attitude toward 
man is friendly, and he should love them as neighbors and future fellow- 
citizens. They and their fallen brethren can communicate ideas to man, 
probably by means of stirring up invisible traces in him left by former 
thoughts. 2 (In explaining this Augustine states that all mental activity 
has motor results.) 

Thus Augustine makes the obligation of the moral law, which for 
him was simply the expression of a supremely righteous will and in no 
sense arbitrary, binding upon all rational beings. No doubt this seemed 
to him as to much later writers essential, for otherwise it could not be 
altogether worthy of reverence as a law of universal reason. It had also 
a more distinctly social value — that of the encompassing crowd of 
witnesses of the moral struggle. 

As has been intimated man was originally a member of the heavenly 
city, indeed he was created to fill up the depleted ranks of heavenly 
citizens, but he soon lost his birthright membership in the higher king- 
dom. To understand how this came about we must get a glimpse of his 
nature as conceived by Augustine. Man is made up of soul and body 
in the most intimate interaction. (That there is interaction is indubi- 
table. How it takes place is inexplicable.) Soul includes (a) the rational 
nature distinguishingjnan from beast, which may be called spirit; (b) a 

1 Ibid., XIX, 5. 2 Letters, 9:3,4. 



14 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

vivifying or animating element linking the spirit to the body. This 
second is the soul in the narrower sense but Augustine rarely makes this 
use of the term. The body is the least important part of man, yet very 
important. At first it was sound and healthful, its appetites untainted 
by lust or excess, and completely obedient to the rational nature. The 
overt act of disobedience, which as the scripture record teaches brought 
ruin to the race, was really preceded by pride and voluntary turning 
away from God. Here the real falling away began, after which man 
was an easy prey to the tempter. The woman was deceived, believing the 
tempter's words. Man was probably not deceived but this does not 
palliate his guilt. His will having already been corrupted by pride he 
yielded "to the drawings of kindred, that of husband to wife, of the one 
human being to the only other." 1 Not only was this disobedience a 
revolt, but it also occasioned another revolt. In the kingdom of man's 
soul itself the fair unity was destroyed, the bodily appetites rebelling 
against the rational nature, thus destroying perfect self-control and 
beginning that warfare which is ever present in the human race as the 
conflict between the flesh and spirit. To understand Augustine we must 
keep in mind that he always represents the corruption of the spirit as 
precedent to that of the flesh, hence logically the sole method of restora- 
tion must be by bringing the soul back to its original relation with God. 

The original sin then was solely the result of man's free will. As 
Adam had no inherited nature his will could well be unbiased or indiffer- 
ent, at least so it seemed to Augustine. All Adam's descendants, since 
born with hereditary taint, are native citizens of Babylon because there 
is confusion in their natures, the rational element being no longer in 
control. Do we wish to know more fully the cause of sin or of the evil 
will? It is vain to do so. The cause is not efficient but deficient. 
An evil will is simply "defection from that which supremely is to that 
which has less of being." In other words sin is a falling away from the 
fulness of life. 

The above is really an admission that the problem of the origin of 
evil is inexplicable. How could the rational nature ever abdicate its 
throne and yet be rational? The Stoic had a similar difficulty. To 
every man the dominion of the inner kingdom is open, and no external 
power can hinder him from exercising absolute sway therein. But the 
wise man who both reigned and ruled in it was rarely to be found if at 
all. The neo-Platonist, too, had a kindred difficulty. Why does the 
soul lose companionship with the world soul ? How can one ever turn 

1 City of God, XIV, n. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 1 5 

from the all-satisfying beatific vision ? The answer is that it is due to a 
falling away toward the formless, the irrational, an answer which 
probably suggested Augustine's doctrine of sin as defect. But why the 
falling away ? 

The complete transfer of all its human citizens from the celestial city 
to its rival's domain seems a discouraging beginning for a kingdom of 
righteousness, but it did not daunt Augustine, for he was confident that 
on the one hand the human soul could never find satisfaction in its fallen 
state, being even when unregenerate sometimes touched by the splendor 
of something nobler, and that on the other hand God's eternal plan for 
the restoration of the spiritual Jerusalem must be fulfilled. 

(3) The sub-human world. — The sub-human world is important to 
man as means to the realization of his end, and such it was intended to 
be when it was created. Essentially every part of it was created in the 
six periods of time symbolized as six days, but there were certain invisible 
seeds of things created which may develop by the action of unusual 
forces, and such development appears to us as spontaneous generation. 
Augustine, like Philo and Plotinus, is not sure that the commonly 
accepted view that the heavenly bodies are purely physical is true. The 
possibility is that they may be found to be members of the heavenly 
city. The earth may be a round body hanging upon nothing but it is 
quite improbable that any future citizens of the heavenly city will be 
found dwelling at the antipodes. 

Augustine's enthusiasm concerning the beauty and utility of the 
world order is great. Nothing in the sub-human world is evil, but some 
things are better than others in order that all might exist. Each thing 
contributes to the universe as to a commonwealth, but this we cannot 
appreciate now because of our limited viewpoint, our ignorance of the 
uses of things, and because we sometimes suffer from them, forgetful that 
we are in a state deserving just punishment. It is good too that there 
is so much beauty in the world, for beauty has a lasting worth and shall 
continue when necessity is no longer. The decay and destruction of 
living forms does not mar the beauty of the whole, for they are changed 
to subserve a universal purpose, and change itself is beautiful. The 
sentiments of Chrysippus and Plotinus concerning the goodness of 
the physical world when seen from the standpoint of the whole had 
perhaps influenced Augustine for they are very similar. All agree 
in looking upon existence in any form whatever as better than non- 
existence, and this furnishes Augustine a basal argument for classing 
the universe as good in spite of the fact that by his theory the human 



l6 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

inhabitants of the spiritual Babylon far surpass in number those of the 
celestial city. 

Augustine quite frequently presents a very different view of the 
world. He always admits that the beauty of earth, sea, and sky surpass 
description, but that is just what makes them dangerously attractive to 
the pilgrim. He should use the world as a caravansary to help him on 
his way, and should not become absorbed in its enjoyment as if it were 
an end in itself. At times this fear of contamination from earthly things 
is so great that we might think Augustine accepted the neo-Platonic 
doctrine of matter as essentially evil, a view diametrically opposite to 
his own. 

IV. PSYCHICAL FACTORS AND THEIR MORAL VALUE 

(i) Will, emotion, and intellect and their interrelations. — Membership 
in a kingdom of ends implies the possession or possible acquirement of 
sufficient knowledge to understand the duties of citizenship. It also 
necessarily implies a desire to perform these duties and some ability to 
do so. Hence in the study of any author who treats of such a kingdom 
it is important to ascertain whether in accordance with his psychology 
such intelligent, loyal, and effective citizenship is attainable. 

Of the larger psychical categories intellect, emotion, and will, 
Augustine places the greatest emphasis upon the will. He is very sure 
that the character of the self is expressed in willing, and that his own sin 
lay in the fact that he willed the evil, or did not will the good. This 
was his experience at a time when his will was free to choose evil or even 
indifferent things but not free to choose the good in the sense of some- 
thing leading to the highest good. Yet when he did choose, he chose 
freely though it was not the good. This last statement is not meant as 
a denial of internal struggle, for this is clearly recognized. The self may 
be at strife with itself and torn asunder by itself, as Augustine recounts 
in describing his unregenerate life. 1 Augustine wishes to emphasize 
two things here. The first is that the act to which we apply either the 
term moral or the term immoral must be imputed to a person, not to a 
complex of warring natures whose only relation is one of conflict. The 
second thing is that his metaphysical theory regards evil not as a nature 
but as a defect. Nature as such is good, and always good. 

The absence of harmony within the self is due to habit, it may be to 
habit acquired by the individual, or it may be to racial habit, or it may 
be to the latter strengthened by the individual's indulgence. "Evil 

1 Confessions, VIII, 10. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 1 7 

habit," " the custom of sin," and " the sin that is the punishment of sin" 
are phrases used to express the after effects of a wrong volition upon 
character, usually upon the character of the individual whose volition 
was wrong, but in the case of Adam upon the whole race descended from 
him, for they all sinned in him. How not only the defect, that is, the 
dread disease that left mankind too weak to resist sin, passed down 
upon all, but also how the actual penalty for sin as an offense against 
God likewise passed down, we shall see later. 1 

The good will also passes into habit, but Augustine nowhere intimates 
that such acquired habits become hereditary. When the habit of willing 
the good becomes thoroughly fixed, then and not till then is there perfect 
freedom. Such freedom stands at the end of probation, not at its 
beginning. It is not found in the pilgrim city, nor was it found in our 
mutable ancestor Adam, for he was free to will not only good but evil 
and the latter is indicative of mutability of character or defect. It is 
interesting to observe that Augustine though he regarded Adam as in 
one sense perfect, that is originally without sin, did not regard him as 
so in another sense. The really perfect man is one who has acquired the 
habit of willing only the good. Life is opportunity for development of 
character. But it must be admitted that it is not so for all men from 
Augustine's standpoint, as will appear elsewhere. The regenerate are 
free in the sense that the will does not consent to evil, but while they 
are on earth some defect or taint remains hindering the soul from per- 
fectly harmonious action. 

In the above paragraphs Augustine's use of the word will is in 
accordance with nis definition of it as a movement of the mind, no one 
compelling us, either for not losing or for obtaining something. He has 
however suggestions of a more fundamental view of will, in which he 
seems to regard it as an organizing or unifying activity of the ego, 
which working sometimes unconsciously sometimes consciously makes a 
conscious and orderly experience possible. 

We may perhaps better understand Augustine's presentation of the 
nature of emotion and its place in the moral life if we examine briefly the 
Stoic attitude toward emotion and will, and the consequent dualism 
which sprang from it, in the practical application of their theory of the 
universal state. The tremendous emphasis which the Stoics placed upon 
the affirmation of the individual's own will is well known, as is also their 
emphasis upon the suppression or negation of emotion. Indeed it 
might seem as if the chief business of will is to crush out emotion. A 

1 Ibid., VIII, 5, 10; On Faith and the Creed, 10, 23. 



1 8 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

man's will is from within. Emotions come from without. They are 
foreigners, aliens to man's essential nature and unless vigorously pro- 
hibited will destroy the peace and unity of his inner kingdom. The sage 
is he who keeps these foes to his inner kingdom at a distance. 

We have seen that the Stoic demand for a universal state was really 
a demand of the spirit for larger social relations, wider sympathy, and 
the general recognition of the essential equality of man with man. Many 
Stoics rejected or at least neglected the political state just because they 
deemed it unprogressive, that is to say, it was not helping but rather 
hindering them from entering into wider personal relations. The Stoic 
saw quite truly that only rational beings could enter into personal 
relations; the law of reason is essential to the universal state. But he 
did not see that personal relations are necessarily emotional, and that 
we can scarcely take an emotional attitude toward mere things without 
to some degree personifying them, also that, conversely, to treat persons 
without feeling any emotion ourselves or without any consideration for 
their emotions would be to treat them as things. The soulless cor- 
poration has shown us how essentially inhuman and immoral such an 
attitude may be, though it only approximately attains it. 

As a result of this the Stoic, when he attempted to crush out all 
emotion and to become the self-sufficient man, shut out the possibility 
of becoming an active world-citizen. He had not learned that the only 
sort of self which can be even approximately satisfactory from the moral 
standpoint is one that both loses and finds itself in the larger social 
whole, and this it cannot do without deep and abiding sentiments often 
strongly colored with emotion, and always to some extent emotional. 
It is partly to avoid this overemphasis on will and reason at the expense 
of emotion that Augustine gives his theories on the place of emotion in 
the moral life. 

There are passages in Augustine which seem to reduce emotion to 
will. "The character of the human will is of moment, because if it is 
wrong these motions of the soul (emotions) are wrong, but if it is right 
they will be not merely blameless but praiseworthy for the will is in them 
all, yea none of them is anything more than will." Desire and joy "are 
but a volition of consent to the things we wish." 1 There are other 
passages in the same chapters in which he seems to reverse his reasoning, 
reducing will to emotion. "The good will is well-directed love, and the 
wrong will is ill-directed love." What Augustine is really trying to do 
is to show that the Stoic view of emotion is wrong, and that intellect, 

1 City of God, XIV, 6, 7. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE "CITY OF GOD 1 9 

will, and emotion are elements not found in isolation from each other in 
human experience, and that unless a fair amount of each enters into the 
combination the results will be unsatisfactory from the moral stand- 
point. "To seek the good of our neighbor and to avoid injuring him 
requires more than mere good will." 1 He goes on to say that a high 
degree of thoughtfulness and prudence is also needed. In the following 
all three elements are declared requisite. "A man's free will avails for 
nothing except to sin, if he knows not the way of truth, and, even after 
his duty and proper aim become known to him unless he delights in it, 
and feels a love for it he neither does his duty or sets about it, nor 
lives rightly." 3 

Augustine declared that the loss of all emotion would mean the loss 
of humanity, and that apathy, if it means insensibility, would be worse 
than all the vices. Augustine perhaps knew that the Stoics claimed that 
the sage who represses all emotion is very different from the man who 
by nature lacks feeling, but if so, he thought they had failed to show any 
moral distinction. 

That emotion should be followed by a wisely directed voluntary act 
and that it has a high social value Augustine clearly understood. The 
scenic plays are condemned partly because "the hearer is not invited 
to relieve, but merely expected to grieve." 3 In speaking of friendship, 
Augustine shows how the milder emotional expressions "melt souls 
together and make them one," and in a letter of instruction to a catechist 
he shows how even the most painful emotions felt by a teacher may be 
made to yield fruit by rendering his teaching more impressive. 4 

The good will properly informed and motivated is not the highest 
blessedness, but it is something not lightly to be esteemed and very near 
to blessedness. " He only is a blessed man who hath all the things that he 
wills and wills nothing ill," and this is attainable only in the future life. 5 

Though it is through will (aided by grace) that man enters into active 
membership in the city of God, yet his certainty of his own existence 
and of his continued future existence is based upon his possession of 
intellect. The certainty of present existence however does not rest 
merely on the fact that the mind knows itself as knowing, and knows 
that it knows this and so on ad infinitum, but also on the fact that 
it knows itself as desiring and willing. In so far as it knows these its 
own activities it knows its substance, even if not wholly. Augustine 

1 Catholic Morals, 26. 

3 The Spirit and the Letter, 5. 4 On Catechizing the Uninstructed, 14, 21. 

3 Confessions, III, 2. s On the Trinity, XIII, 5. 



20 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

frequently protests against any absolute separation of mental activities. 
" Memory, understanding, and will are not three minds but one." 1 
The desire for knowledge he may have regarded as bound up with other 
activities, at least this is suggested in his view of the ordinary student 
desiring to know because of what he already knows. Possibly the 
extraordinary student may be moved purely by curiosity about the 
unknown. 

The certainty of immortality rests upon the relation of the intellect 
to eternal truth. "If the soul dies what then? Why then truth dies, 
or intelligence is not truth, or it is not a part of the soul, or that which 
has some part immortal is likely to die." 2 Early in Augustine's religious 
life he asserted that as for himself immortality without increase of 
knowledge would be undesirable. This he did not retract, though he 
asserts elsewhere a blind will to live as characteristic of all mankind. 
"What if this immortal life should permit thee to know nothing more 
than thou knowest? .... I will weep so much that life itself shall 
cease to be. Thou dost not desire then to live for the sake of being but 
for the sake of knowing? I grant the inference." 3 The Confessions 
reveal Augustine's extreme hunger for truth in boyhood. It is perhaps 
this strongly intellectualistic bent which determined his attitude toward 
the future life as contemplation. 

(2) Desires and their moral value. — Desire for unending existence 
plays an important part in Augustine's system of thought. It may 
mean a mere blind instinct to live on even though life's gold has become 
dross and there is no hope of finding an alchemist to change it back 
again. An example of this appears in the hypothetical case of men 
doomed to deathless misery who are offered the alternative of total 
annihilation. Joyfully and exultingly they choose to endure endless 
anguish rather than not to live at all. The connection of this view with 
Augustine's general conception of the end of human society will be 
treated later. Passages are frequent in which the desire for continued 
existence is given a content worthy of respect, such as an ampler being, 
or fuller knowledge, or deeper union with God and man. 4 

All desire joy, but the fact that an act brings happiness is no suffi- 
cient criterion of its goodness. The nature of the thing enjoyed must 
be considered. Sometimes men are misled by a semblance of joy, 

1 On the Trinity, X, 10-12. 

3 Letters, 3; On the Trinity, X, 10; XLT, 4. 

3 Soliloquies, II, 1, 36. 

4 City of God, XI, 27; XIX, 4; Confessions, XIII, 9. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OE GOD 21 

sometimes they are too weak to live the life that brings the highest joy 
and try to be content with a lower. The true summum bonum to be 
desired above all else has two characteristics: (a) There is nothing 
better than it, hence it must not be inferior to the best that is in man. 
(b) It must be something which cannot be lost against the will, for 
otherwise fear of losing it would keep us from enjoyment in the fullest 
sense. 1 The true highest good to which all our duties are related is not 
wealth, or honor, or sensual pleasure as the baser philosophers claim, or 
even spiritual strength as their nobler brethren say, but union with God, 
the true source of felicity. Felicity is recognized as more than happiness. 
It is happiness with desert. The desire for the summum bonum then 
must include the desire to be worthy of happiness. 2 

Augustine's view of the desire of praise brings into great prominence 
the social side of morality. He admits that he is not altogether free 
from it and is not quite sure that he ought to be, but he knows he would 
not sacrifice truth for love of praise. The "splendid faults" of the 
heathen world especially of the greatest Roman statesmen sprang from 
the love of praise, and it is always one of the most powerful determinants 
of human action. It does not however furnish a sufficient basis for a 
sound morality, though it often serves to restrain vice. 

(3) Love of self, of others, and of God. — Love of self so far as it is love 
of the body man has in common with the beasts. The body should be 
kept subordinate to the soul since the latter is the part "that observes 
good customs and inquires, and learns and grasps the things that eter- 
nally abide," but he who loves his soul merely for his own sake does not 
enjoy himself at his best; he should look at himself in relation to God. 3 

Augustine recognizes clearly that both virtue and sin have a social 
aspect, and that the latter nevertheless is in another sense unsocial. 
"There is nothing so social by nature as man, nothing so unsocial by 
corruption." 4 The nature here referred to is that which existed in the 
racial man Adam, but Augustine does not mean that this social nature 
is wholly lost. He believed in the possibility of disinterested love for 
friends even in the unregenerate, and claims that he both gave and 
received such. The temptations which spring from the social side of 
man's nature he describes in an introspective analysis of a transgression 
in his boyhood days. "Alone I had not committed that theft [stealing 
pears], wherein what I stole pleased me not; but rather the act of 

1 Cath. Mor., 3. 

3 City of God, IV, 18; VI, 12; VIII, 8-9, 10; X, 18. 

3 Cath. Mor., 5-8. 4 City of God, XII, 21-22, 27. 



2 2 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

stealing. Nor to have done it alone would I have liked so well, neither 
would I have done it. O Friendship, too unfriendly! .... When 
they say let us go, let us do it, we are ashamed not to be shameless." 1 
He adds elsewhere illustrious examples of men who fell through social 
influence, not through intellectual error, among them Adam. 

Not only is man social by nature. The first law of grace is to love 
God and our neighbor. There is no surer step to the love of God than 
the love of our neighbor, or to use another figure the human love may 
be the cradle of the divine. To love one's neighbor is better than to 
love one's own body since we may have communion with our neighbor 
in spiritual things. 2 

Love of our neighbor means to do good to him, partly to his body, 
partly to his soul, but the chief obligation to him is to commend him to 
God. "Our neighbor" is given the broadest possible interpretation. 
Men of every race and society are included in it and even the wicked 
should be treated as possible future fellow-citizens in the celestial city. 
Angels too are our neighbors, and not the mere fact of our dwelling on 
earth can hinder our fellowship with them. 3 

With Augustine the love of God was no mere abstract intellectualis 
amor Dei, but a strong abiding sentiment becoming at times a deep 
emotion and carrying with it a sense of satisfaction which "the per- 
ception of fragrance, of harmony of tones, and beauty of form" suggests 
faintly but cannot give. 4 Cor nostrum inquietum est donee requiescat in 
Te is practically the keynote of his entire works. 5 Perfect love to one's 
neighbor demands this love as a precondition, for men are separated 
without it from one another "by divers pleasures, and desires, and the 
uncleanness of sin." 6 Man's whole nature is disorganized and the entire 
universe seems discordant until he finds rest of soul in this divine 
affection. The cardinal virtues may be interpreted in terms of it: 
temperance as love keeping itself pure for his sake, fortitude as endurance 
for his sake, justice as serving God only therefore ruling rightly, pru- 
dence as love distinguishing between what helps or hinders it in its 
approach to God. Evidently the bond of unity in the city of God is 
personal devotion or love to the founder of the city. 7 

1 Confessions, II, g. 

3 On Catechizing, 26; Cath. Mor., 26; Christian Doctrine, I, 27, 30-31. 

3 Ibid.; Cath. Mor., 26. 

4 Confessions, X, 6, 24-25. 6 On the Trinity, IV, o. 
s Confessions, I, 1. ? Cath. Mor., 15. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 23 

V. VALUE OF SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS AND AGENCIES 

Augustine admits of the city of God what must be admitted of every 
kingdom of ends, that it could never come into being or have any growth 
unless man were social by nature. Our next question is, how social 
institutions already established can be used for the advancement of the 
kingdom of ends. We shall want to know the relative value of such 
institutions, and whether there are any that should be either eliminated 
or reconstructed, as well as how and when such elimination or recon- 
struction is to be brought about in case it is necessary to make it, for 
until such adjustment is made a kingdom of ends in its full development 
cannot come. 

(1) The family. — The family in the relation of husband and wife was 
the first organized society and existed from the beginning, though its 
harmony was greatly disturbed by the Fall. Since marriage is divinely 
ordained it must not be classed as an evil, but it is a lesser good than the 
celibate life, and is not now incumbent upon the saints as it once was 
for the sake of increase of heavenly citizens. Now an abundant off- 
spring may come in by spiritual birth from every kindred and tribe and 
nation, and ample material for holy friendship is furnished. 1 

If we contrast Augustine's view of marriage with standards of 
morality prevalent in Carthage where his early life was spent, and even 
with those prevalent in the imperial city several centuries earlier, it 
seems indeed very high. Yet there is in it the reflection of his own 
degradation before his conversion, and of the low moral tone of his 
native province, shown by the tremendous emphasis on its more dis- 
tinctly animal elements. The taint of sin is always manifested in 
marriage, thus affording poor prospect for social perfection of earth. 
Advance over earlier views of marriage is marked in respect to placing 
the same standard of purity and loyalty to marriage vows on both 
husband and wife, and in the nature of the authority given to the 
husband as head of the family. This in the case of both husband and 
father is very different from that which Roman law gave. The place of 
woman on earth was no doubt greatly elevated by granting her an equal 
citizenship with man in the celestial Jerusalem, and Augustine, like most 
sons of superior women, was disposed on the whole to be generous to her. 

The family is recognized as the basis of the political state. It was 
meant to give training for citizenship; hence the father of a family 
ought to frame his domestic rule in harmony with the civic rule. Within 

1 The Good of Wedlock, 9. 



24 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

the family, as elsewhere, authority is opportunity for service, and it 
should be so regarded and used as a sacred trust, with tenderness and 
consideration for the welfare of others. The implication is that the 
proper training of the child will improve the condition of the state. 

The child though born in a Christian family is not thereby a citizen 
of the heavenly city. The sin of Adam passes down upon all through 
the remains of sin even in regenerate parents. 1 More frequently it is 
stated, and here with reference to the actual guilt as well as to the 
weakened and defective nature occasioned by the sin, " all were in Adam 
when he sinned." 2 From this awful solidarity of the race Augustine 
finds no escape, yet he will not go so far as to say that the whole accumu- 
lated guilt of ancestors from Adam down to the immediate parents rests 
upon the child. This problem he thought should not be answered 
rashly but he evidently inclines to answer it negatively. No one could be 
more emphatic in the assertion that the child cannot in infancy commit 
actual sin, and that he is only potentially a person, than Augustine, though 
to the results of inherited sin he attributes much of the child's physical 
weakness and also some of its emotional expressions. Through the 
baptism of the child the parents can secure its future safety while in 
infancy, and perhaps may through instruction aid it in the proper 
direction thereafter. There is little ground for hope of the establish- 
ment of an approximately perfect society on earth with so much original 
sin in its members. 

(2) The school and education. — The school is recognized as a necessary 
agency for the development of the child. Education, in the elementary 
schools especially, is pictured as a painful process. Boys are driven by 
punishment to learn letters or trades, and the learning to which they are 
driven is sometimes in itself such a punishment that they prefer the 
punishment that drives them to it. The descent to Avernus is easy for 
the child, and law and instruction are necessary to restrain him from 
that to which "his vitiated nature tends by its own weight," hence "the 
multifarious threatenings, the birch, the strap, the cane." 3 Yet 
Augustine was not without a wish to sweeten the "salutary bitter" of 
school life, and in the analysis of his own experience as a pupil he reached 
some very modern conclusions. He found he had learned Greek in 
school with extreme difficulty, but Latin in infancy with great ease 

1 Enchiridion, 26, 46-48. 

2 City of God, XIII, 3; XIV, 1; Confessions, VIII, 10; Against Fortunatus, 22; 
On Nature and Grace, 81. 

s City of God, XXI, 14; XXII, 22. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 25 

because he needed it as a tool for expression. "A free curiosity has 
much more influence on our learning than a necessity full of fear," is 
another of his conclusions. In criticizing the higher schools he decides 
that grammar and eloquence are more easily caught than taught by 
formal rules, and even the art of reasoning may be presented in too 
formal a way. The rhetorical schools in which he himself had served as 
a teacher he does not wholly condemn, but he despises their tendency 
to sophistry and overemphasis of form, and neglect of intellectual con- 
tent and genuine moral sentiment. 1 

The necessity of adapting instruction to individual cases and the un- 
profitableness of absolute fixity in either the subject-matter or form of 
presenting it were clearly recognized by Augustine, but it is quite prob- 
able that his best suggestions as to method, occurring as they do as mere 
hints in the midst of other material, were practically lost to posterity. 2 

In his early writings Augustine gave the traditional liberal arts and 
philosophy a very high value, but later he rated them lower, and finally 
retracted his commendation of the liberal arts, which he no longer 
regarded as essential to Christian life, or producers of it. He regrets, 
too, that he spoke of certain philosophers " shining by the light of virtue" 
who were not truly pious. 3 The narrowness of the last statement is 
undeniable, but his condemnation of the traditional school curriculum in 
which the liberal arts were all important finds confirmation in modern 
writers, one of whom speaks of the best of the Roman aristocracy of the 
last century of the empire as without sympathy for the masses, and as 
absorbed in a sterile culture beyond which there was no curiosity, no 
scientific inquiry, no hope of further advance. 4 

Augustine's fear of materialism led him to place a low value on the 
study of the material sciences, much of which did not come under the 
liberal arts. " Searching with greatest inquisitiveness into that material 
mass which we call the world" may cause the investigator to think 
nothing exists but what is material. 5 Augustine was himself really 
deeply interested in science, and at times commends highly the study 
of corporeal things, "a rational cognizance of which distinguishes man 
from beast" and which is necessary because man cannot live on earth 
if he devotes himself wholly to contemplation. The higher function of 

1 Confessions, I, 9, 13-14; IV, 16; Christian Doctrine, II, 36-37; IV, 2, 4. 

2 On Catechizing, I, 15. 

3 Christian Doctrine; II, 40; De ordine, I, 8, 11; II, 30; Retractationes, I, 3. 

4 Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, II, 4. 

5 Cath. Mor., 21. 



26 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

reason however is contemplation and Augustine feared that emphasis 
on the lower function would mean neglect of the higher. Augustine 
also claimed rightly that most of the science of his day was guesswork, 
and he felt that the all important problem of human thought was to 
find "the goal of that course down which as though down a river the 
human race is sailing, and the transference thence of each to his own 
appropriate end." 1 

In Christine Doctrine Augustine discusses the value of the various 
branches of knowledge as aids in interpreting scripture. He finds that 
some knowledge of natural science, history, and even of mechanical arts 
is helpful. The science of reasoning is much more valuable because it 
reveals certain logical laws which men do not create but discover for they 
exist eternally and have their origin in God. So also does the science of 
number. 2 Along with several of the church Fathers Augustine advised 
the free use of the moral precepts and of the practical arts of pagan 
civilization. 3 

(3) Celibacy and monasticism. — There is no particular virtue in the 
celibate life unless undertaken for a religious purpose. When this is 
done it ranks much higher than wedlock, yet there are some limitations 
to this. Humility and obedience are the two essentials of the Christian 
life and sometimes these are found in greater degree in the married than 
in the celibate. Celibacy is of counsel, not of precept. Someone asked 
Augustine, "If all should choose the celibate life would not the race 
cease ?" He replied, " So much sooner will the city of God be filled, and 
the end of the world hastened." 4 Yet this is an isolated expression 
occurring but once. 

Augustine highly commends the monastic life for its voluntary 
poverty, chastity, and obedience, but he sharply criticizes those monks 
who go from place to place "hawking about bones of martyrs if indeed 
they be martyrs," and in other ways bringing the charge of venality 
on the church. He extends the rebuke to those who refuse to perform 
the usual prescribed manual labor. He declares that their excuses are 
vain, and all manual labor which ministers to human needs is honorable. 
Let them meditate while working and sing songs of praise to the rhythm 
of their bodily movements in performing their duties. 5 

The movement toward celibacy and monasticism which Augustine 
favored in the church had much in common with Stoicism and neo- 

1 On the Trinity, XII, 3, 4; IV, 16. 

2 Christian Doctrine, II, 26-39. 4 The Good of Wedlock, 10. 

s Ibid., II, 40. s The Work of Monks, I, 38. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OP GOD 27 

Platonism. Epictetus among the former thought that in the present 
troubled times marriage was not advisable for the wise man, and the 
neo-Platonic doctrine of evil as inherent in matter led in the same 
direction. Augustine no doubt greatly overestimated the monastic life 
as a means to moral perfection and failed to appreciate fully how much 
the Christian home contributes to the upbuilding of spiritual life. At 
the same time he did much to socialize monastic life, by bringing the 
monks under discipline and helping to fit them for the very effective 
work which they performed in the Middle Ages, a work which would 
have been vastly more effective if all had lived true to the advice given 
in The Work of Monks. 

(4) The state. — Augustine is almost universally quoted as teaching 
that the state necessarily has its origin in fraud and violence, and that 
it is and must remain the creature of sin. To the writer this statement 
seems inadequate and unfair though isolated passages may seem to 
justify it. Augustine presupposes an ideal social condition in which 
men were free and equal, and so thoroughly subject to reason that 
neither positive law nor an organized government was needed. He also 
teaches that a state may be so narrow in its aims, so essentially unjust 
that it is practically organized brigandage, but he does not imply that 
such must be the character of the state. In fact his view of the state 
is quite opposite. He says that the earthly city as an organized political 
community is a good, and the ends which it seeks, peace and concord, 
are good. Of course to seek peace and concord implies at least a possi- 
bility of discord, but unless it is a sin to seek to escape from sin it does 
not adequately describe the state to call it a creature of sin. Elsewhere 
Augustine says that it is consistent with the natural order and with the 
will of God that the just should rule, not however from the lust of 
dominion but for the welfare of others. The pilgrim city, sojourning in 
the midst of the earthly city, has much in common with it. It obeys its 
laws in regard to the maintenance of the public welfare and enjoys its 
peace, but hopes for a more perfect peace in its final home. There are 
however two dangers to which the state is exposed. One is that it may 
lead its citizens to think that the earthly goods are the only good, and 
the other is that it may introduce the worship of false gods as a national 
religion. 

We must gather Augustine's idea of government partly from his 
criticism of the empire. He is not sure that the best state is of wide 
extent. Small states living simply and unostentatiously in neighborly 
concord might be really better than a vast state. Or if small states had 



28 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

come into the empire freely it would have been better for the public 
morals and the dignity of man, both of which suffer from wars of conquest. 
It would have been well, too, if they had been taxed by their own consent 
for the support of the landless classes, and the tax paid to good 
administrators. 1 

That perfect justice cannot be found on earth Augustine always 
claims. He sympathizes with the man who from a sense of duty to his 
fellows takes office; for, though his intentions be good, because of 
ignorance he will sometimes punish the innocent and let the guilty 
escape. Yet the wise judge will not refuse to take up this duty to 
human society, for even the relative justice attainable here is of great 
value. 2 Justice must rest on a religious foundation, for it is not possible 
either in the individual or the community unless the body is subject to 
the soul, and this can only be when the soul serves God. In his letters 
to Christians in administrative offices Augustine repeatedly encourages 
them in their work. Through his advice, given, however, in a time of 
unusual danger from the barbarian attacks, Boniface turned aside from 
a contemplative life to devote his military talents to the defense of 
Africa. Augustine answered the pagan charge that Christianity was 
not consistent with Roman citizenship by saying that if there were 
"such soldiers, such husbands and wives, such parents and children, 
such masters and servants, such kings and judges — even such taxpayers 
and tax gatherers as Christianity demands," the state might be restored. 
"It may be that God will yet restore the Roman state, who knows ?" 3 

Augustine had no definite plan for bringing about direct political 
reform. He probably would have deemed effort in this direction as 
futile as had been that of the Gracchi. As Reuter suggests, those who 
have criticized most sharply his lack of political interest have not stated 
how the government could have been reconstructed and reorganized. 
There seemed to be no practicable way of amending the constitution. 
Augustine's interest in the state was confessedly secondary. This is 
stated repeatedly in unmistakable terms. A few of the reasons why it 
should be so are not difficult to discover. One was that his attention 
was concentrated upon the heavenly state as involving more lasting 
interests, promising more complete satisfaction, and even in its earthly 
representative manifesting more life and vigor in its organization and 
securing a deeper social unity than the Roman state. Augustine, who 

1 City of God, IV, 3, 4, 14, 15; V, 17. 

3 Ibid., XIX, 6. 3 Letters, 138: 17; City of God, IV, 7. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 20. 

was essentially democratic in spirit, rejoiced in the fact that slaves, 
peasants, and handicraftsmen could rise to a high position in the church. 
In the church councils of his time and in the management of the affairs 
of a congregation the voice of the majority predominated in many 
things. Another reason was that the actually existing state seemed to 
men of classical training far inferior to the earlier state, with no indication 
of regaining its former condition. A third reason was that his spiritual 
ancestors both in theology and philosophy had given ordinary political 
interests a subordinate place. This is true of the church Fathers, not 
merely because their supreme interest was elsewhere, but also because 
in the centuries when tradition was being established they were prac- 
tically excluded from political affairs inasmuch as paganism was the 
state religion. It was true but in different degrees of Epicurean, Stoic, 
and neo-Platonist. Epicurus looked upon participation in state affairs 
as by no means remunerative in the coin of his ideal realm of pleasure. 
Zeno advised participation in public affairs where circumstances do not 
hinder. Chrysippus said that the wise man can take active part in 
political life only in progressive states; the statesman must displease 
either God or the people. Even Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, both 
active in political affairs, prized their world-citizenship more highly 
than the Roman, and duties to the human race higher than those imposed 
by particular cities. Epictetus kept his wise man employed mainly in 
talking to world-citizens about freedom and slavery, not however to the 
total neglect of the narrower citizenship. 

Augustine though seeking civic peace and concord as a means to 
aid the pilgrim en route to a better city, not as an end in itself, no 
doubt thought that he was really serving the best interests of the state. 
Without a deeper sympathy between man and man and a strengthening 
of moral fiber it is improbable that any political scheme aiming to 
secure greater justice and equity could have been successful. From 
Augustine's standpoint Christianity promised to remove many of the 
evils which made a true commonwealth impossible. Instead of a general 
indifference to men of other races and classes it could give a deep interest 
in the welfare of others, and a true fraternal spirit. It condemned that 
love of luxury which was the source of political and economic corruption. 
It protested fiercely against the vices which had made the Roman so 
often physically inferior to the barbarian. It looked forward to a judg- 
ment which should reveal and punish man's sins against his neighbor. 
It taught that no man's wealth can be exclusively his own so long as the 
poor are in need. It inculcated many virtues similar to those of the 



30 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

most noble Romans of earlier times and claimed to root them more 
deeply in man's nature. It promised to fit men for self-government, 
which Augustine believed should be permitted to them wherever they 
showed great care for the common interest. The heresies which at this 
time were throwing a dark cloud over the fair picture Augustine hoped 
would be but temporary, and yet it cannot be claimed that he hoped for 
a thorough moral reconstruction of the earthly state. The real triumph 
of righteousness and justice could come only in the heavenly city incom- 
parably more glorious than Rome. 

(5) The church: Its authority and sacraments. — With Augustine the 
church was the pre-eminent social institution, adapting its administra- 
tion to the needs of everyone. The famous apostrophe to the church 
in Catholic Morals represents it as the conserver of all normal social 
interests. 1 Its glory is not in wealth or external authority but in its 
consecration to the work of love. It seeks the good of all, and it is the 
city of God on earth adorned with every moral virtue. 

Before examining the means which the church employs in its efforts 
for the common welfare it may be well to examine the nature and extent 
of its authority. "To be unwilling to grant her the first place is either 
the height of impiety or headlong arrogance." 2 This authority is rep- 
resented as inaugurated by miracles, admitted by the consent of peoples 
and nations, evidenced by the name Catholic and by the continual 
succession of priests from the apostle Peter. In the midst of a greatly 
disturbed social order Augustine felt that the only means of preventing 
social anarchy was to regard the authority of the church as above 
question. 

Its authority is superior to that of reason. The latter "falls back 
discouraged and exhausted before the light of truth with respect to 
divine things till met by the friendly shade of authority." 3 In the order 
of nature when we learn anything "authority precedes reasoning." Of 
course Augustine's presupposition is that if reason were perfect there 
would be no conflict. 

Nor does Augustine hesitate to subordinate the authority of the 
Scriptures to the church. This he does in a treatise written against the 
Manicheans. "For my part I should not believe the gospel except as 
moved by the authority of the church. "4 This sentiment may surprise 
one who has read much in Augustine for very often he appeals to the 

1 Cath. Mor., 30. 

2 The Profit of Believing, 35; Against the Letter of Manicheus, 4. 

3 Cath. Mor., 2, 7. " Against the Letter of Manicheus, 5. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 3 1 

authority of the Scriptures as final. He however rejects an interpreta- 
tion so literal as to make seeming inconsistencies irreconcilable. Any- 
thing found inconsistent with love of God and one's neighbor is to be 
treated as figurative. It is hard to believe Augustine always kept this 
in mind. 

It was a problem for later centuries, not for the fifth, whether pope 
or emperor was superior in temporal power. In later years both parties 
used Augustine's name to support their respective positions. He 
believed that an imperial sinner should submit to spiritual discipline, 
but this does not carry with it an assertion of superior temporal authority 
for the church. It may be regarded as simply one of the declarations 
of the essential equality of men in the sight of God and his representatives 
on earth which Augustine was fond .of making. 

Augustine at first opposed employing the aid of the secular power 
in punishing heresy but later approved of it, believing that he saw 
undeniable evidence of its good results in Hippo. 1 He always protested 
against the death penalty for heresy, and would not permit that abomina- 
tion of the Roman trial, the torture of witnesses. Yet in admitting the 
aid of the temporal power at all, as well as in his subordination of the 
authority of reason and the Scriptures to that of the church, he was 
substituting a bond which might become external, and in some respects 
was already so to many, for the internal bond which he meant to provide. 

How fully Augustine made every individual dependent upon the 
ministry of the church appears most clearly in the doctrine of baptism. 
An infant born where he could not be baptized "is rightly excluded from 
the kingdom of heaven." The conclusion at times tortures Augustine 
but in spite of moral pangs he holds to it unflinchingly just as he accepted 
the eternal condemnation of the moral teachers of early Greece against 
his natural feelings and sense of justice. Investigation of earlier custom 
seemed to show him that "It was not an open question admitting of 
discussion, but was fixed and unassailable that the soul would forfeit 
eternal salvation if it ended this life without the sacrament of baptism," 2 
hence he treated the matter as finally settled though it both conflicted 
with his own view of salvation by faith and gave him endless difficulty 
in attempting "to justify the ways of God to men." The former he 
answered by saying that it is the faith of others which saves the child, 
without which "the fleeting and perishable element" could do no good. 
In order to explain now the punishment of the unbaptized infant can be 

1 Letters, 93:5; 104, 173. 

2 On Forgiveness, III, n; On Nature and Grace, 9. 



2,2 A KINGDOM ON ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

just he sought aid from Jerome in constructing a metaphysical hypothesis 
of the origin of souls that would explain the transmission of actual 
guilt. 1 Jerome gave no aid, and Augustine, never quite satisfied with 
his own solution, in his "Retractions" treated the question as unsettled, 
advising others either to leave it alone or else to accept no solution 
contradicting the Catholic faith with regard to original sin in infants. 2 
Usually Augustine seems not so much bound by previous teaching as by 
the custom of previous ages. 

(6) Special religious instrumentalities. — Augustine tried hard at times 
to escape from bondage to external rites, but he was a Roman hence per- 
haps he could not, and at least he did not wholly, succeed. He wished to 
make the mediation of the church necessary, but at the same time to throw 
the most powerful emphasis upon divine grace. Hence he taught that the 
sacraments of the church though necessary to salvation are in themselves 
not sufficient for it. He who receives them without faith is yet in sin. 
He who lives unworthily and in gross sin will be shut out from heaven 
though he receives them. Man must fulfil the law of love to God and his 
neighbor. But how can man born in sin fulfil the law of righteousness ? 

In attempting to answer this question Augustine was led to take a 
position which makes the bond that was intended to unite the city of 
God seem arbitrary and external, in spite of his attempts to avoid this. 

The law reveals to man his sinfulness. This may be the first step 
toward salvation or it may lead in the opposite direction, for to know a 
thing is forbidden may cause us to desire it the more. To obey the 
divine commands from fear will not avail, for though fear involves a 
kind of faith true faith works by love not fear. How then is the true 
faith to be obtained? Here Augustine found a dilemma. To say the 
will to believe is the gift of God would give men an opportunity to 
excuse themselves by saying it had not been given them. To say it is 
of man would make man glory in his own strength, than which nothing 
could be more disastrous. Free will must not be allowed to limit free 
grace. Augustine wavered for a time between the two views, though 
in fact always inclining the more toward the denial of freedom. In his 
later works man is left with but the merest semblance of freedom. All 
is of grace. It seemed to him that to admit the slightest moral initiative 
on man's part would be opening the way for the denial of the need of 
any divine aid whatever. 3 

1 Letters, 166; 169:4. 2 Retractationes, II, 45. 

3 The Spirit and the Letter, 7, 8, 13, 20, 52, 54, 60; On Forgiveness, II, 28; Conf., 
IX, 1; On Predestination, 7, 8; On Perseverance, 33. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 33 

An experiential basis for a tremendous emphasis upon grace as 
against free will Augustine probably found in his own conversion. 
"Where then through all those years was my free will, and out of what 
deep and secret retreat was it called forth in a moment?" No doubt 
from the first Augustine felt that this sudden deliverance involved a 
power other than his own, but it was more than a decade later before he 
took an extreme position in denying free will. The scriptural basis for 
his change of view he claimed was, "What hast thou that thou hast not 
received?" and this he would not admit might be interpreted to mean 
that man was originally given the power of choice. Augustine, however, 
always is very careful to insist that this imparted faith is not, though 
received through grace, forced upon us. "It is not of necessity but of 
love shed abroad in our hearts — a love that makes us willing where we 
were unwilling," hence our consent to suggestions of good is in the 
highest degree voluntary. " God's work in us is not as it is in creatures 
without reason or will by nature." What he means to say is that God 
does not take away our free will, but really makes the will, hitherto not 
free to do good, free by his grace. 1 

Augustine was true to the religious consciousness in so far as it 
usually involves a strong sense of new strength or of help coming from 
without and lifting the individual up from the weakness and narrowness 
of his individuality into a vastly larger life. Yet it may well be ques- 
tioned whether there is not always some sense of individual effort present 
in the experience. Grace appears as irresistible mainly because the 
individual could not have refused to follow the new light which came 
to him without becoming utterly debased in his own eyes by so doing. 
Augustine's own experience as given in "The Confessions" certainly 
reveals many definite voluntary acts leading toward his wonderful 
deliverance. 

As protesting against a narrow individual morality which denies all 
help from without Augustine was right. He was right also in so far as 
he denied the possibility of willing the good without some love for it. 
Without this love it is not really the good that is willed but something 
connected with it. Most probably his aim was partly to show that 
morality is more than legality. But when through exaggerated expres- 
sions he practically canceled the individual's own activity and left him 
a passive recipient as it were, he struck a severe blow at that moral 
order which he wished to preserve. Active citizenship in the city of 
God lost much of its significance, because its individual members lost 

1 Com/., IX, 1; On Predestination, 7, 8. 



34 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

all moral initiative. In fact this moral kingdom became a feeble reflec- 
tion of the political state of Augustine's own day. The monarch alone 
was active, politically in one and morally in the other. The future life, 
too, conceived as happiness with desert, became an impossible con- 
ception, for man was left with so small a part, if indeed with any part 
in his own moral reconstruction, that it could not be seen where any 
desert came in. This problem Augustine foresaw but did not answer 
satisfactorily. 

But an even more crucial problem remained. Why does God assist 
one and not another ? Augustine boldly asserts that this is done, even 
when some who receive no assistance are living purer lives than others 
who do receive it. His favorite defenses of the justice of God in this 
respect are: (a) None have any claim on him hence he may show 
mercy to whom he will. All are born under penalty, (b) Without the 
contrast with penalty mercy could not be appreciated, (c) Though 
there be seeming injustice there is no real injustice on the part of God, 
and "we should not search into things too strong for us," 1 advice which 
Augustine himself never consistently followed. 

The first of the above answers was peculiarly destructive to the bond 
which united the citizens of the city of God. The divine fatherhood of 
the race, carrying with it human brotherhood, was interpreted in a sense 
once recognized in Roman law but utterly inadequate for a higher 
developed moral society. The Roman law had permitted the father of 
the newborn child either to take it up and bestow upon it the tenderest 
paternal care, or else to refuse to do so and to permit or command its 
exposure until death resulted. With this type of fatherhood the pre- 
determined and absolutely fixed rejection of the greater part of the 
human race and its assignment to eternal death is thoroughly con- 
sistent, but not so with the fatherhood of God as presented by Jesus. 

The second answer implies that the redeemed either have never felt 
real penitence for sin or having felt it have forgotten it. The real 
problem of an absolutely painless heaven lies rather in how a pure soul 
can remember without pain, a wrong done to another even though 
assured of its forgiveness. 

The third answer was an expression of Augustine's profound faith 
in the divine justice, which was always to him a basal conception in 
spite of the fact that he sometimes made it hard for others to believe in 
such justice. He thought that none but a madman could doubt God's 
justice. 2 

1 Against Two Letters, II, 15; IV, 16; Letters, 95:6. 3 Ibid., 166:6. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 35 

Contemplation has the peculiar distinction of being both a means to 
the realization of individual and social ends, and the end itself. It 
gives both a foretaste of the final end and new strength and courage for 
the journey. Social considerations should always be regarded in choos- 
ing a contemplative life. If the claims of others demand our active 
service, we should not choose the contemplative life, but no life however 
active should be without the contemplation of God. 1 Contemplation is 
not indolent vacancy of mind but the discovery or investigation of truth. 
Its object is God or other objects as seen in relation to God. It may 
have little emotional content, or may at rare times be ecstatic. It is 
reason in its highest function hence reason in lowest function should 
obey its commands. It is reason developed into higher intuition though 
this phrase is not used by Augustine. Prayer and communion with 
God are included in it and celibacy is to be preferred because it gives 
more leisure for it. It is pre-eminently the means of spiritual advance- 
ment — a veritable bond of life, for it unites the soul with God. 

Long before Augustine the contemplative life had been strongly 
emphasized as the highest type of life though the object of contemplation 
was conceived differently. Aristotle gave eight reasons why he con- 
sidered it so. 2 Plato too had spoken in the Republic of a beatific vision 
of eternal realities, a sort of immediate intuition penetrating beyond the 
limits of rational thought. The Stoic retired within the citadel of his 
mind and meditating upon universal law sought to bring his own will 
into relation with it. In the midst of war Marcus Aurelius did not 
neglect his hours of meditation. Neo-Platonism made contemplation 
of supreme importance, as the means by which we rise to that vision 
which, though rarely reached here, gives promise of a future unbroken 
vision in which the seer and the seen become one. The world of the 
inner life had revealed itself in such splendor to these men that they 
were intoxicated with it. 

VI. THE LIFE AFTER DEATH AND THE FINAL GOAL 

(1) The intermediate state. — The final goal in the city of God is 
perfect felicity in the contemplation of God. This involves moral per- 
fection, for felicity is happiness with desert, hence only the pure in heart 
may know it. As the work of moral purification is incomplete at death 
it must be completed. To those who love Christ more than earthly 

T On the Trinity, XII, 14-15; Reply to Faustus, XXII, 27; Conf., IX, 10; X, 40; 
XII, 16. 

2 Aristotle Ethics, x. 8. 



36 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

things yet love the latter inordinately the loss of earthly things at death 
may be both a purification and a punishment. 1 In two of his works 
Augustine says that a kind of purgatorial fire is not impossible. That 
the righteous may endure temporary punishment between death and the 
judgment is conceded. At this stage prayer for the dead avails. He 
usually speaks as if the dead slept until the final judgment, their dreams 
in the meantime being in accordance with their desert. 2 

(2) The end of Babylon. — At the resurrection both wicked and 
righteous receive bodies again, those of the wicked being material and 
imperfect, and those of the righteous glorified and perfect. The wicked 
are consumed in material fire which does not destroy the body but 
tortures the soul. Their severest penalty however is exile from the city 
of God. The punishment, though for temporal sins, is eternal since 
neither in earthly nor in heavenly courts does the time spent in com- 
mitting the evil deed determine the nature of the penalty. The sinner 
wills the eternal enjoyment of his sin hence his penalty is eternal. If 
God is the source of life will not the soul that is cut off from him become 
extinct ? Augustine has two incongruous answers for this question : (a) 
The soul which has known truth must like truth be eternal, and (b) 
God preserves even the evil spirits so they may receive just punishment; 
if he did not, Augustine elsewhere admits, they would cease to be. 3 In 
one respect the wicked have their will. They prefer living on in 
torment to annihilation. 

There are degrees in punishment in exact accordance with what 
justice demands, hence infants receive the mildest form and those who 
lived praiseworthy lives without knowledge of the gospel the next 
lowest. 4 For all there is a possibility of some respite from penalty, but 
this Augustine does not attempt to describe definitely. 

The general presupposition is that the wicked know that their penalty 
is just, but a very serious difficulty arises here, especially in the case of 
infants. By hypothesis the wicked do not develop physically or mentally 
after death, and the child is absolutely unable to understand moral 
relations before death hence its suffering must be eternally a mere blind 
endurance of pain, wholly purposeless. 

1 Enchiridion, 69, 109. 

2 Tractate on the Gospel of St. John, 49:9-10; Enchiridion, 69, 109-10; City of 
God, XXI, 13, 24. 

J Enchiridion, 27, 112; Letters, 3. 

* On Forgiveness, II, 21 ; The Spirit and the Letter, 48; City of God, XXI, 16. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 37 

(3) Life in the celestial Jerusalem. — The judgment is a time not only 
of separation but also of purification. The good have the last stain of 
sin removed and receive a new body. This new body is spiritual and 
without blemish or lusts of the flesh. Augustine is not anxious to exclude 
all material characteristics. It is quite indifferent whether the body 
does or does not have weight. There is at any rate such vitality that 
movement is pleasure, or without effort in the sense of strain. In fact 
on earth a healthy man moves his body though large with much greater 
ease than a sick man moves his emaciated form. The essential thing 
seems to be with Augustine that materiality and inertia should be 
swallowed up in life and vigor. The soul is strong and in complete 
harmony with God and other souls, and the subordination of the body 
is perfect. The latter is not a hindrance but really necessary for com- 
pleteness. Man is better with it than without it. Here Augustine is 
true to his basal metaphysical principle that matter as such is not 
essentially evil but good. Evil originates from the soul and passes 
down to the body. It is the purification of the soul for which baptism 
is meant. But since the soul cannot be perfectly purified on earth or at 
least never is so purified, the dualism of good and evil will last as long 
as -the soul is united with the earthly body. It is easy to see how this 
invariable connection of the body with evil could come to be regarded as 
causal, and this is just what happened, and thus practically the neo- 
Platonic idea of the inherent antagonism of matter and the good was 
restored. 

Humanity, that is as much of it as belongs to the city of God, finds 
its fulfilment and lasting joy in the beatific vision. It would seem in 
general that beatific visions lend themselves better to appreciation than 
to description. In neo-Platonic terms they go beyond the realm of 
the concept. Augustine considers contemplation rather as the highest 
function of reason, but he too said the vision surpassed description. 
The beatific vision was evidently his dominating concept and largely 
through his influence it became so for many of the noblest minds of after 
ages. Augustine's own magnificent personality had combined in it 
strong will, keen intellect, and deep emotion. Did the beatific vision 
give proportionate recognition to all these elements ? We have said he 
regarded contemplation as the highest exercise of the function of reason 
but in the same paragraph he gave it a value for action, and may not 
have meant to shut volitional elements out from the highest vision. In 
fact he represents the angels as carrying on many and varied activities 



38 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

without interruption of contemplation. Let us examine the content of 
the concept more closely. 

Augustine clearly emphasized the knowledge side. We have seen 
that he deemed immortality undesirable without increase in knowledge. 
There were very many problems Augustine wanted an answer for, and 
hoped to receive it hereafter. Some of them pertained to material 
things, such as how things are conserved, the order in which they exist, 
and how they give way to something else. Then there were the problems 
about the justice and equity of the great judge, why some gentle souls 
suffered torturing pain on earth, and monsters of wickedness prospered. 
"The righteous now know that these things are just, then they shall 
know why they are just." 1 

There is however good reason to think that Augustine would have 
rejected the belief of an earlier philosopher that insight is the final goal 
of man, and that he would have resented the charge sometimes made 
that his vita beata is merely will-less contemplation. "In that life the will 
shall have all that it wills, and there gratification of desire shall give 
satisfaction but not satiety." 3 Rest in the after life "is not slothful 
inaction but a certain ineffable harmony caused by works in which there 
is no painful effort," and "the repose on which we enter is consistent 
with lively joy in the exercises of the better life." 3 Augustine was 
clearly conscious that the perfection of life demanded more activity 
than he had been able to define or describe, but feared to attempt more. 
Certainly he did not mean that contemplation should be regarded as 
essentially passive. In accordance with his psychology contemplation 
involves attention which is an act of will. "The will is the uniter of the 
visible thing and vision." Memory, which also involves will, is present 
in the future life. 4 

The emotional side is certainly not neglected. Love to God and to 
those who dwell in him is mentioned very frequently. Since the vision 
of God is also a vision of all things which exist as related to him neither 
its emotional nor intellectual content can be small. 

The scriptural bases for the beatific vision most frequently employed 
by Augustine are: (a) "Now we see through a glass darkly as in an 
enigma but then face to face, etc." 5 The thought here seems to be that 
of the solution of the puzzles of life through greater knowledge hereafter, 
but the context in which it occurs declares the emptiness of knowledge 

1 Letters, 195:6; Enchiridion, 94. 

2 On the Trinity, XIII, 7; City of God, XXII, 30; On Catechizing, 25, 47. 
J Letters, 55:9; 189. 4 On the Trinity, XI, 3. s I Cor. 13:12. 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OF GOD 39 

without love, (b) "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see 
God." 1 This may be interpreted as recognition by the Supreme Moral 
Person of internal rectitude in man. (c) "We shall be like him for we 
shall see him as he is," 2 suggesting moral transformation through direct 
or intuitive perception of the Supreme Being. To all of these elements 
Augustine gives attention. 

Just how far and how directly Augustine was influenced by earlier 
beatific visions it is difficult to say. Beatific visions were seen even 
before Plato's day, and were not limited to any country. The neo- 
Platonic influence was brought to bear upon Augustine very directly, 
but there is an essential difference between the neo-Platonic vision and 
the Augustinian. The former meant loss of personality, it seems often 
loss of distinct consciousness. The latter meant an intensifying of 
consciousness and enlargement and completion of the self by the social 
intimacy upon which it entered. It must be remembered that to 
Augustine the final goal for man is the binding of the personality of the 
individual to that of other individuals through the Supreme Person, 
God, and as expressive of such a union the beatific vision must always 
be social and personal in character. 

VII. THE VALUE OF AUGUSTINE 's CONCEPTION OF THE CITY OF GOD 

The conception of the city of God presented by Augustine was a 
marked advance beyond the Stoic conception. 

(1) It appealed to the whole nature of man, while Stoicism, suppress- 
ing the emotional nature, could reach only men of iron will and highly 
developed reasoning powers. Its wise men were few, and active citizen- 
ship in the universal state necessarily greatly limited. 

(2) Augustine's conception made provision for a partial realization 
of the ideals of the divine city by means of an organized society on earth 
which should place this end above all others. Stoicism, though not 
absolutely without the missionary spirit, could not organize its forces 
effectively so as to gain the strength which is born of actual association, 
and which the individual working in isolation cannot have. As against 
the Stoic overemphasis on the power of the individual to reconstruct 
himself morally through reason and will independent of outside aid, 
Augustine's assertion that men fall together and must rise together 
because bound by ties other than the purely rational, as shown in his 
doctrine of the child's condemnation for racial sin, and its salvation by 

1 Matt. 5:8. 2 1 John 3: 2. 



40 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

the faith of others, was in some respects a wholesome though extreme 
reaction. 

(3) It brought into unity ethics and religion much more completely 
than the Stoic system had done. Stoicism gave too little attention to 
the religious aspect; neo-Platonism too little to the ethical. 

(4) It promised an unending development of life and thus afforded 
a future outlook. Personality was to be preserved and personal relations 
widened so as to include men of every age and race. Members lost to 
the earthly society were to be reunited in the heavenly. The ideal 
universal state was to become actual. 

(5) It gave reinforcement to the individual conscience by the power- 
ful stimulus of a future judgment revealing the thoughts and intents of 
the heart, and thus free from the externality of earthly judgments of 
approval and disapproval. At the same time the judge is represented 
as at all times ready to help the individual to live righteously and to 
sustain him in his efforts for the moral upbuilding of society. To this 
social stimulus of an omnipotent judge was added that of an invisible 
society of men and angels as witnesses of his moral struggle. The Stoic 
had little of this social stimulus. Too much credit cannot be given him 
for his heroic assertion of the power and duty of the individual to stand 
alone in the midst of social surroundings antagonistic to his lofty con- 
ceptions; but on the whole he was left so lonely and comfortless that it 
is not difficult to understand why suicide might seem justifiable to him 
in seemingly irremediable situations. 

As a kingdom of ends Augustine's conception has several very 
serious defects: 

(1) There is great incongruity in its metaphysical presuppositions. 
The purpose of the universe is conceived to be the expression of the divine 
goodness, but this does not harmonize with a predetermined plan to 
exclude the greater part of the human race from any other partici- 
pation in the eternal good than the purely formal and negative one 
of a bare existence in eternal torment enduring punishment in no 
sense remedial. 

(2) There are elements in the system which tend to destroy that 
conception of personality which is the necessary bond of a true kingdom 
of ends, and which Augustine on the whole was anxious to preserve. 
In its best form the system represents a personal God as the intermediary 
link making possible the fulfilment of man's duty to his fellow-man. In 
its worst form the concept of human personality is practically annulled 
by denying to man the moral initiative necessary to personality. If 



AUGUSTINE AND THE CITY OP GOD 4 1 

this initiative be denied man cannot be regarded as an active member 
of the kingdom of ends. 

(3) Progress is restricted by overemphasis on the authority of the 
visible church, and a tendency to see in her customs and rules a per- 
fection not congruous with the generally accepted hypothesis that her 
members do not attain perfection on earth, and with the admission that 
there was a real development of moral perception in the earthly Jerusalem 
of the Old Testament period. 

(4) Progress is likewise hindered by what has been called the Roman 
tendency to harden into inflexible dogmatic statements the teachings of 
the Scriptures. Though Augustine advises that anything found in the 
Scriptures at variance with the love of God or of one's neighbor should 
be interpreted figuratively, he persistently violates this principle in 
evident unawareness of the fact that if the city of God is to be progressive 
new viewpoints must be taken, and frequently older ones, illuminating 
and helpful perhaps to earlier generations, must be forsaken. 

(5) A violation of the human sense of justice in placing actual moral 
guilt on infants who, it is admitted, cannot have sinned as persons. 

(6) The natural basis for the development of a moral kingdom is 
destroyed by the assertion that the moral virtues manifested by the 
unregenerate are necessarily immoral in their spirit and motive. This, 
though meant as a protest against the incompleteness of a morality 
which too often did not go beyond instinct, or custom, or merely pru- 
dential considerations, was stated in extreme terms. Augustine denied 
that the law was written in any legible form in the heart of the unre- 
generate. It may well be doubted also whether a belief in the total 
spiritual depravity of one's neighbor tends to the furtherance of mutual 
sympathy and understanding. 

(7) A too great tendency to accept the possibility of the development 
of the person for the larger social relations of a universal kingdom in 
almost absolute isolation from social relations with his fellow-men. While 
Augustine moves away from the hermit life he does not move very 
rapidly, or very far. 

(8) A morbid accentuation of the unsatisfactoriness, failures, and 
gloom of life to the neglect of its brighter aspects. This, while partly 
explicable by the troublous character of the times in which Augustine 
lived, seems like a rhetorical device to increase the glory of the heavenly 
city by darkening the contrast picture of the earthly. 

(9) Too faint an appreciation of a progressive realization of the end 
in the means. Faith as active appropriation of spiritual power receives 



42 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

less attention than hope of a future "far off divine event." It is a very 
serious defect in Augustine's conception of the city of God that there is 
so little hope of its realization on earth. Augustine is mildly melioristic 
rather than optimistic. In this he is severely logical in following out his 
premises concerning the nature and transmission of original sin. If 
every new member of the race must come into it, burdened, corrupted, 
and limited by original sin as much as his ancestors have been, and 
possibly even more so, and if the social institution on which the increase 
of the race depends cannot escape the taint of sin, and also if for the 
Christian there is suppression not total eradication of the sinful element 
in him, the outlook is necessarily gloomy. It was so gloomy for 
Augustine that he even resorts to a highly figurative interpretation of 
the millennial period of the church, practically denying that Christ will 
ever reign more completely on earth than he does now. 1 The whole 
world will never be leavened with the leaven of the kingdom of heaven. 
So also in the universe as a whole sin will ever continue as an irremediable 
defect. 

1 City of God, XX, 8-17. 



CHAPTER III 

AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 

I. IMPORTANT CHANGES FROM THE FIFTH TO THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 

(i) Political and economic changes. — The next serious attempt after 
Augustine to develop a systematic theory of life and its meaning in terms 
of a social order was made more than eight hundred years later by 
Thomas Aquinas. Momentous changes had taken place in the city of 
God and also in the whole political and social world. The boundaries 
of the church had been greatly extended but in some directions there had 
been diminution. Augustine's Africa, lost in part before his death, was 
now entirely without her borders. To the new states, formed partly 
from new territory once belonging to the empire and partly from lands 
over which the Roman rule had never extended, the church stood in 
most intimate relation. 

England had been settled by Germanic tribes, Christianized, organ- 
ized first into a national church, then into a national state, had assimi- 
lated several groups of invaders and Christianized those who were not 
so before their coming. In the period of Aquinas it was undergoing 
marked political changes. Magna Charta had been granted shortly 
before and now the movement was toward the Model Parliament and 
Confirmatio Cartarum. In this century one of the kings had offered 
homage to the pope and another had been pitifully subservient to papal 
demands, but not without popular protest. 

Gaul, largely in the hands of the barbarians before the fall of the 
Empire, had been conquered by the Franks who soon accepted Chris- 
tianity. The Carlovingian dynasty came into power, formed a close 
alliance with the pope, and its king received from him the imperial title. 
His weaker successors under the stress of new barbarian invasions had 
failed to maintain the unity of the Empire. As a means of defense the 
feudal order grew up ; but a little later a line of feudal kings of unusual 
ability began to build up a strong central government. The Crusades 
helped them to escape from feudal restraints, and in Aquinas' day the 
saintly monarch, Louis IX, was adding new strength to the state. 
Though a devoted son of the church he was not weakly submissive to 
the papal power. 

In the tenth century Otto the Saxon received from the pope the 
imperial title as head of "the Roman Empire of the German People." 

43 



44 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

For three centuries following, German kings hazarded their lives and 
the welfare of their native land to maintain imperial sway. Politically 
the result was a failure ending in the collapse of the empire, and in the 
triumph of its chief but by no means only opponent, the papacy. Dur- 
ing the Interregnum the greatest confusion prevailed. There were 
about three hundred fragmentary political divisions and no hope of unity. 

Italy, never strongly feudal, was then an aggregation of petty 
tyrannies and of city republics moving rapidly in the direction of tyranny. 
The cities were at strife with each other, and within the cities the bitterest 
class strife prevailed. 

Castile and Aragon were in this period growing up in the midst of 
Mohammedan neighbors. Portugal was nominally a Christian kingdom, 
and since Augustine's time many other small Christian kingdoms had 
been established. 

The idea of a universal monarchy did not perish with the house of 
Hohenstauf en, but it never regained its earlier force among the Germans. 
It is true in a sense that the papacy fell heir to the fallen German- 
Roman Empire, but it is also true that half a century earlier Innocent 
III exercised from the papal chair a domination far wider than had ever 
been possessed by that empire. He had received homage from almost 
every ruler in Europe, but his authority and that of his successors had 
not remained unquestioned. It was yet to be seen, says a recent his- 
torian, whether the ecclesiastical state could be reconciled with current 
legal theory. The tremendous importance attached to the study of 
Roman law in the two centuries preceding made the problem of more 
general interest. 

Economic changes in these intervening centuries had been very 
striking especially in the later ones. Serfdom had taken the place of 
slavery. The Crusades had greatly weakened the feudal lords and given 
the cities an opportunity for development. The old barter system no 
longer existed, and commerce and manufacture had received a wonderful 
impetus. The merchant and the artisan were becoming very important, 
and agriculture was no longer the only industry. The burgher was 
forming the basis for the third estate. New forms of industrial life drew 
peasants and serfs to the cities, and greatly increased the wealth of the 
country. This rapid transition was not without danger to moral 
interests, and commercial values threatened to predominate over all 
others. 

We have seen that the problem of the relation of the various political 
states to the papacy was vital. Another equally important problem was 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 45 

concerning the nature of the state and the duty of rulers to their people. 
Along with this and to a large extent involved in it, was the problem of 
the mutual relations of the natural, the positive, and the divine law. 
These problems were forced to the front by the breaking down of the 
feudal order, the internal strife within the Italian cities, and the forma- 
tion of new states. At least twice Aquinas was called upon to give 
advice concerning the political state. 

(2) The church and the new monasticism. — The value of the service 
rendered to society by the organized, church in the Middle Ages can 
scarcely be overestimated. It is in the main true that the clergy and 
their earthly head had earned exaltation by leading every advance in civil- 
ization. Many at times forgot their holy mission, but there were always 
some who condemned their defection and tried to purify the church and fit 
it for better service to humanity. In this their success was often great, 
but never more striking and widespread than in the revival heralded 
early in the thirteenth century by the coming of the friars. St. Francis, 
founder of one of the two great brotherhoods, at first questioned whether 
he should retire from the world or give himself to active service. The 
example of Jesus solved his problem. Henceforth the monk instead of 
fleeing from the world might seek its most densely populated places 
with a gospel message, or a ministry of mercy. His holy city was to be 
created rather than sought by the sword. The second order, the Domini- 
cans, also had a message for the multitude. With them contemplation 
became largely a preparation for instructing others. Both orders took 
up what was best from orders formed in the preceding century, but they 
had two unique characteristics, (a) ardent zeal for the salvation of 
others, and (b) poverty not merely for the individual monk but for the 
order. The first contrasted strikingly with the indifference to others' 
welfare often manifested by both the secular and the monastic clergy. 
The second was a protest against evils which had grown up in a feudalized 
church. The active ministry of these orders in public preaching, 
teaching, and works of mercy necessitated relaxation from the rigorous 
discipline prevalent in some of the earlier orders. 

The secular clergy was slow to recognize the worth of the two orders 
of friars, but the pope soon perceived their efficiency, and kings and 
common people sought their ministration in preference to that of the 
seculars. The Dominicans, who were chiefly concerned with doctrine, 
early sought the university centers and won a place in them in spite of 
great opposition. Many Franciscans followed their example. Though 
Augustine and many others had always assumed that the monastic life 



46 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

should be one of social service there were still some who looked upon 
this active imitation of Christ in mingling with and serving others as 
something quite inconsistent with a profession of "forsaking the world" 
which they interpreted quite literally. It was essential to the unity of 
the faith that the work of friars should be shown to be consistent with 
the highest ideals of the church. 

(3) The universities and the new philosophy. — The university centers, 
sought by the friars, were for them strategic points of great value. 
Within little more than two centuries these institutions had come into 
being, and were exercising a great influence. The movement out of 
which they rose preceded the Crusades. A comparatively peaceful era 
gave opportunity for the development of interest in dialectic, law, 
medicine, and theology in the existing schools. Bologna became famous 
for law, Salerno, afterward Naples, for medicine, and Paris for theology. 
Charters were given later by which they became universities. The 
Crusades caused an intellectual upheaval which stimulated their growth 
most powerfully. Within these schools keen criticism of existing 
theories arose, (a) There was a demand for reconciliation of contra- 
dictions in theological literature. Abelard's Sic et non had helped 
to reveal this need, (b) It was a pedagogical necessity that the vast 
mass of theological material inherited from preceding ages should be put 
into scientific form. Hugo of St. Victor and Peter the Lombard had 
made important steps in this direction, but a more highly developed 
scholasticism demanded something more completely organic, (c) A 
task not less difficult was given to the church by the introduction of the 
philosophy of Aristotle. 

The logic of Aristotle, long accepted as authoritative, prepared the 
way for his other works first made known to the Middle Ages through 
Arabic thinkers, and a little later brought to the West from the Latin 
empire at Constantinople. By the church this new material was 
regarded with suspicion. Conclusions drawn from Aristotle by Arabic 
commentators were antagonistic to the Christian faith, hence the church 
forbade the use of his works, except the Logic, under severe penalties. 
But soon a closer examination revealed that Aristotle's metaphysical 
theories would lend themselves to an interpretation not incongruous 
with generally accepted religious beliefs, and in some cases could be used 
as a positive support. 

(4) The new situation in ethics. — It was not merely as affording 
metaphysical support that Aristotle was adopted by theology. There 
were other problems which theology as guardian of the moral order 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 47 

could not neglect. We have already seen that there was a demand for 
a theory of government. Here Aristotle promised aid. Still another 
problem had come into consciousness through wider knowledge of non- 
Christian peoples gained partly by mingling with them in the Crusades 
and partly by more peaceful contact. It was observed that they too 
recognized duty and virtue, and that their good deeds were deserving 
of a better title than "splendid faults." There was need of a relatively 
independent ethics and of showing the relation of the morality with which 
it dealt to Christian morality. For the independent ethics much might 
be drawn from Aristotle. 

Summing up the difficulties which confronted Aquinas we may say 
his problem was : How to meet the dangerous disturbance in the moral 
order due to several mutually interacting causes, viz., (a) General 
uncertainty as to the relation of church and state, especially with respect 
to the relation of the pope to the heads of the various states, (b) The 
need of a theory of government and of law. (c) Diversion of attention 
from the religious foundations of the moral order, and a neglect of moral 
values due to the breaking up of the earlier industrial order and to 
the rapid rise of commercial interests, (d) Uncertainty whether the 
monastic life could be consistently spent in active social service, (e) 
The new university spirit interested in the above problems, and dis- 
satisfied with existing theology because of its contradiction and its lack 
of scientific form. (/) The undermining of religious belief especially in 
the universities by the revival of the Aristotelian philosophy, (g) The 
need of an independent ethics or recognition of moral values in actions 
not springing from a religious motive. 

Albertus Magnus, the distinguished teacher of Aquinas, and the 
Englishman Alexander of Hales had already done notable work bearing 
upon at least two of these problems, but it was left to Aquinas to com- 
plete their work. His eminent fitness sprang from his thorough mastery 
of the scholastic method, his conciliatory disposition, his very great 
piety, and his remarkable knowledge of past and of contemporary 
thought. His work is an attempt to organize and interpret experience, 
using the term in its widest sense, under a general concept which will 
give a richer meaning to every particular part. The concept is that of 
a very complex and highly organized kingdom of ends known as the 
universal church. 

II. ENDS AND THE SUPREME END 

(1) The teleology of the universe. — "God is the end of all things" is 
the brief formula by which Aquinas expresses his doctrine of the supreme 



48 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

end. He explains this to mean that God is the sovereign or common 
good since upon him the good of the whole community of creatures 
depends. In this sense " God hath wrought all things for himself, but 
since as first producer he does not act in view of acquiring anything by 
his action there can be no other end for his intellect and will than that 
he should communicate his goodness." 1 This doctrine is essentially like 
Augustine's. Being as such is good, and is the expression of the goodness 
of God. The perfection of the universe requires infinite variety so there 
must be creatures in it who could fall away from goodness, as well as 
those who could not. This provision made possible an explanation of 
the origin of evil. Like several of his predecessors, Aquinas answers a 
moral problem in terms of esthetics. Infinite variety or esthetic per- 
fection is made a supreme determining principle of creation. At other 
times Thomas says God permitted evil knowing that he could bring 
good out of it. 

(2) Nature and early history of intellectual creatures. — All creatures 
contribute to the universal perfection, but not in the same degree. 
Intellectual creatures, as conscious of ends and able to direct their 
activities toward ends, participate in the divine plan uniquely. They 
may be called co-workers with God because of this, and in his providence 
they are cared for for their own sakes while other creatures are cared for 
that they may serve these higher beings. Intellectual creatures, then, 
are never mere means but ends. They may be said from this standpoint 
to constitute a kingdom of ends, but Thomas does not use this phrase. 
From our standpoint however it is a very imperfect kingdom of ends, 
because of a constitutional defect. Its founder is represented as wishing 
some good to all but not eternal life to all though he does not positively 
predestine any to eternal death. Not all are equally ends in themselves. 
The universal church is a mystic body in which all men on earth are 
members as also are all those who have entered into a higher life. But 
of the earthly members many are so only in potentia. Some of them are 
predestined to become so in actu, but the great majority will never do so. 
The latter cannot be called active members of the mystic body or 
kingdom of ends. 2 

The supreme end of intellectual creatures as might be expected is 
intellectual activity in the beatific vision of God. This Thomas never 
forgets to state emphatically. With him there is less emphasis on the 
volitional elements in contemplation than in Augustine* Contemplation 

1 Contra Gentiles, I, 86-87. 

"Ibid., Ill, 112-13; Summa Tkeologica, I, 23:3; III, 8:1-3. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 49 

is pre-eminently an exercise of the intellect. How the final end as 
contemplation reflects back on the present life, making the ideal life 
contemplative in character, we shall see later. Thomas however is very 
careful to represent contemplation not as a passive state. It is, as with 
Augustine, an activity and a distinctly personal activity, and it is in the 
after life an uninterrupted activity. 

The part played by angels in carrying out the divine plan is worked 
out quite fully by Thomas, as is also their organization into orders and 
hierarchies, suggestive of the feudal order but more perfect. They 
move all corporeal things and they also influence man by illuminating 
his intellect or by persuading him, but they never force his will. A 
guardian angel is given to every child at birth and remains with him till 
death. This guardianship always is of some worth, for by it even the 
most wicked are kept back from many evil deeds. Activity in carrying 
on the administration of affairs in the universe is no hindrance to the 
angelic contemplation of God. The fall of the angels follows the tra- 
ditional description. 

Of the class of beings whose activities resemble the divine in that 
they are intellectual and volitional, man is the lowest member. He 
stands between subsistent forms which have no bodily existence and 
forms wholly bound up in matter. His soul can exist in separation from 
the body, but it is incomplete in this state, and essentially, the soul is 
the form of the body. Its individuation is derived from its real or 
possible, present or past, commerce with the body whose form it is. 
This gives the body a prominence that Augustine would have resented. 

The fall of man was a fall from grace supernaturally bestowed upon 
him at creation and by virtue of which body was perfectly subordinated 
to soul, lower forces to reason, and the soul to God. The fall was due 
to sin springing from pride but involving other elements also, and the 
results of it passed down to posterity. Without the supernatural grace 
bestowed at creation man might have reached his natural end, in full 
possession of the cardinal virtues, but could not have attained unaided 
his supernatural end, the beatific vision. After man's nature was 
wounded and corrupted by sin the moral life still remained but the 
practice of the natural virtues became more difficult. 

Augustine admitted that some good could be found in every man, 
but he had refused to call it true virtue. Thomas does not take so 
vigorous a view of the destructive nature of the original sin. The 
child's lack of self-control and inability to reason are not the penalty of 
sin but have a natural cause in cerebral humidity. Instincts are not to 



50 A KINGDOM OP ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

be crushed out. They are like children with a will of their own, and 
should be ruled by reason. Training rather than suppression is needed. 

In this larger recognition of the natural, Thomas leaves the way 
open for a relatively independent treatment of ethics, but only relatively 
independent for as Rietter says, "Virtue is always considered as the way 
to the goal not the goal itself." 

(3) The infra-human realm. — It is somewhat difficult to understand 
just what division Thomas makes between the human and sub-human 
world. Celestial bodies as such are more perfect than human bodies, 
and they are moved by subsistent intelligences higher in rank than human 
souls, but these do not stand in the relation of souls to the bodies which 
they move. All created things are part of a very definite order. Per- 
haps Thomas thought of the feudal hierarchy, but the greater perfection 
of his subordination of each part to one above it and of all to God 
suggests rather that God is the infinite Logician, and the universe an 
animated logical schema of which he is the highest term. 

In this scale of being the lower serve the higher, hence we may term 
them means; but as it is the glory of the higher to diffuse goodness like 
God they also in some measure serve the lower. All things seek their 
own good, the inanimate through the physical appetite (physical and 
chemical forces), the merely animal through the sentient appetite, and 
the rational through the rational appetite or will. In this sense all seek 
after God who is at once the source of being and activity, and the 
highest goal. 

Thomas, though highly appreciative of the fulness of reality and of 
the almost infinite variety of the universe, seems scarcely so appreciative 
of the charm of nature as Augustine. It is certain that he feared its 
danger much less. On the whole he pictures the infra-human world as 
very good and no insuperable hindrance to a kingdom of ends. Our 
next step is to examine whether within man's own inner nature there is 
any irreconcilable conflict such as would make active membership in 
such a kingdom impossible. 

III. PSYCHICAL FACTORS AND THEIR INTERRELATION 

(1) Will and intellect. — It is through intellect and will, the capacity 
of conceiving ends and following them out, that man becomes a member 
of a kingdom of ends. Every man is a member of a kingdom of ends in 
the sense that all are under obligations to treat him as such, but he may 
fall far short of being an active member, thoroughly loyal to the interests 
of the kingdom, if will and intellect do not work together harmoniously, 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 5 1 

or if there are other elements in his nature which prevent their efficient 
action. Hence it is necessary to examine the relation of intellect and 
will to each other and to other mental activities such as emotion, desire, 
instinct, and impulse. 

Aquinas defines will as a craving after, or longing for, a conceived 
good. It differs from animal appetite. The latter man also possesses 
in common with the beasts in the form of " concupiscible or irascible" 
faculties. Animal appetites must move in one specific direction. They 
are determined by a sense judgment. Man through his power of reflec- 
tion has many courses of action open to him. He has "free judgment 
which is free will." 1 This statement however must be considered only 
as partial. As an intellectualist Thomas tends to give the primacy to 
intellect in the volitional act, but as a moralist and as a theologian he 
is led to assert the primacy of will. - At times he vibrates between these 
two positions. 

The primacy of the intellect is suggested in such passages as, "Free 
will is a free judgment on the matter of a specific notion or general 
concept," and "Sin is in the reason when the reason either commands 
the inordinate acts of the lower powers, or after deliberation does not 
refuse them." Reason is also represented as furnishing the proper 
motive. 3 

The primacy of will seems to be taught in such passages as, "If the 
failure of the apprehensive power were a thing in no way under the 
control of the will there would be no sin in either will or apprehensive 
power." So also in indorsing Augustine's statement that sin is never 
committed except by the will, he adds by way of exposition, "by the 
will as prime mover, but it is committed by other powers as moved by the 
will." Similarly in respect to meritorious acts, he says, "The intellect 
of the believer (in the assent of faith) is not finally determined by the 
reason but by the will." It may however be said of the last quotation 
that not the general primacy of the will is asserted here but only the 
special primacy of the supernaturally aided will in matters of faith. 3 

A tendency to compromise but to favor intellect the more is found. 
"It is manifestly false to say the will is higher than the understanding 
as moving it, for primarily and ordinarily the understanding moves 
the will. Incidentally the will moves the understanding inasmuch as the 
act of understanding itself is apprehended as good and as desired by 
the will The will would never desire to understand unless first the 

1 Contra Gent., II, 48. 

3 Ibid.; Sumtna, I— II, 74:5. * Ibid., I-II, 74:1-2; II-II, 2:1. 



52 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

understanding apprehended its own act as good." The conclusion is 
that simpliciter intellect is higher than will, but per accidens the will is 
the higher. 1 

Since intellect is regarded as the differentiating feature between man 
and beast, and will is regarded as common to all in so far as it is an 
appetite for good, and peculiar to man only in the sense that it is 
an intellectual appetite, naturally the greatest emphasis must be placed 
on intellect. It is through the universalizing power of intellect that the 
will gets its freedom. It is through the supernaturally illumined intellect 
that man becomes a sharer in the beatific vision, the last and highest 
end of rational creatures. The main function of will seems to be to 
suspend action until the reflective process can complete itself, and the 
impulse can be thereby illumined and guided, and this of course cannot 
be wholly independent of intellect. 

(2) The will, impulse, and emotion. — In the activities of sense appetite 
there is always some alteration of a bodily organ hence such activities 
may be called passions. In man the conative activities are not always 
well trained, so under some sudden incitement of sense the will "may 
burst out into action" before there is time for reflection, or perhaps after 
some reflection but before the process has gone far enough to take into 
consideration the proposed act in its wider relations. The result is 
that the particular good apprehended is not the good which the actual 
situation demands. 

There may be three causes assigned for the evil act, (a) the will 
which carries it out, (b) the reason which works apart from due rule, 
and (c) the sensitive appetite as inclining to sin. Thomas emphasizes 
the fact that sensitive appetite in moderation is not an evil but a very 
positive good. In excess it distracts mental energy and consequently 
leads a man to act without reflection, or if he reflects he fails to recall 
the law that prohibits the particular sin involved though he knows it 
well, or if he recalls the general law he fails to see that this particular 
case with which he is dealing comes under it. Thus, though he seems 
to act in the teeth of well known truths, he is really for the moment 
blinded by passion. This explains the old puzzle how a man can be 
rational and yet do what he knows is wrong. 3 

Will is not merely the sensitive appetite illumined by reason, or sense 
desires tamed and well trained. It is also a distinctly intellectual 
appetite, a desire for intellectual activities as such, without regard to 

1 Contra Gent., Ill, 26. 

*Summa, I-II, 75:3; 77:2; II-II, 158. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 53 

their practical value. As intellectual not intellectualized appetite it 
will find its final gratification in a heaven of contemplation. 1 

Sense appetite and passion are not always to be curbed and restrained. 
It is well that emotion should follow the lead of reason, and it is some- 
times a man's duty to call forth emotion in order to make his action 
more vigorous and effective. The absence of a passion when it should 
be present is not a virtue but a vice. Thomas seems not to fear that 
the emotion summoned forth by reason may go beyond the limits 
which reason would prescribe. Augustine had protested against the 
Stoic suppression of emotion and saw that emotion had a social value, 
but did not estimate the natural instincts and emotions so highly as 
Thomas. 2 

The higher emotions are not passions at all. They accompany 
intellectual activities in all intellectual beings, but in men they may flow 
over into the sensitive appetite. In connection with the final goal they 
play an important part. 3 

(3) The nature and value of habit. — Aquinas is very careful to restrict 
the use of the term habit so as to preserve its moral value by retaining 
in it an element of reflective consciousness, hence he does not admit 
that an animal, though trained to follow fixed lines of activity, really 
forms habits. Self-consciousness must be present in some degree both 
in the incipient and later stages of habit. A thoroughly mechanized 
act would not be a habit, for "habit is something one uses at will," by 
which Thomas seems to mean consciously and with some degree of 
reflection. The function of habit as he presents it is practically that of 
securing prompt, easy, and efficient action along lines originally estab- 
lished by reason and never wholly without rational oversight. Man's 
appetitive nature, never in such complete revolt with Thomas as with 
Augustine, may be trained to submit to rational sway, and until so 
trained man is not virtuous. The readiness or tendency of the desires 
to submit to reason is the habit essential to virtue, and the good will 
is one in which this habit is established. 4 

A habit may be destroyed, or weakened by repeated acts to the 
contrary, not by one act, for it is not engendered by one act. It may 
die from cessation of exercise or become decrepit through feeble exercise. 
Habit may be called the fortitude aspect of all virtues. In striking 
contrast with Augustine, Thomas places the emphasis on good habits 
rather than bad, but he also believed that the effects of previous sinful 

1 Ibid., I-II, 31 :4. 3 Ibid., I-II, 22; 59. 

1 Ibid., I-II, 59; II-II, 158: 1-8. < Ibid., I-II, 49-62. 



54 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

acts remained as habits and hindered moral development. We shall see 
later that Thomas, though emphasizing the necessity of consciousness 
and a certain amount of reflection in moral habits, left a sphere of 
custom or social habit where he allowed this reflective process to take 
upon itself none of its usual reconstructive function, and thus really- 
returned to the mechanization of habit which in moments of truer 
insight he rejected. 

(4) The freedom of the will. — St. Thomas supports the freedom of the 
will by several arguments. The perfection of the universe requires 
that in the higher scales of being there should be creatures resembling 
God in that they possess intellect and free will. The will itself is more 
perfect because of its possibility of varied activity. Rationality surely 
implies freedom, for why should a man deliberate and judge if he has no 
power over his own acts? The moral order implies it for without it 
reward and punishment, praise and blame are absurd. The realization 
of any preconceived end is through the causality of freedom, and without 
such causality social and political institutions could not exist. 1 

Aquinas was anxious to preserve freedom of the will from external 
compulsion. Neither angels, nor heavenly bodies, nor any external 
influence can force the will of man. God alone can change it and he 
never does so by violence, but through the working of grace in the form 
of an interior impulse which he as the first cause of the will and source 
of its conservation can employ to render the unwilling willing. This 
divine aid to the will must come to man before he can attain his super- 
natural end, or have the infused virtues. Thomas however is confident 
that he who does not turn to righteousness in some way excludes himself 
from conversion, by closing his eyes as it were, and as a result not being 
able to see the light. 2 

Thomas was also desirous of saving the will from internal compulsion. 
In one sense the will is determined internally but not so as to hinder 
freedom of choice. Man can will nothing except under the form of the 
good, but the intellect presents a large number of particular goods from 
which the will may select inclining to any one of them. The final end, 
happiness, is willed through a natural notion of good by all, but not all 
know that its complete realization can be found only in God, hence not all 
will it effectively. In man's ideal state the will follows reason freely 
as a guide, but, as we have already seen, in his actual state it often 
"bursts out into action" before reason has considered the specific act 

1 Contra Gent., Ill, 73-85. 

1 Ibid., Ill, 3-6, 87-92, 149-50. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 55 

in its universal relations and given judgment. Between divine reason 
and the divine will there is no conflict. 1 

(5) The desire for and the nature of happiness. — We have seen that 
happiness is desired and in one sense willed by all men as an end; but 
there are two standpoints from which an end may be regarded, and by 
means of these two standpoints Thomas escapes hedonism. From the 
first of these standpoints the object to be gained is foreseen. From 
the second, the use or enjoyment of the object. In the former sense he 
who really understands his own nature and the provision made for its 
satisfaction seeks God as the final end or object, that is he seeks union 
with God. Happiness is not delight though delight is its concomitant. 
Happiness is the perfection of the activity whereby we are united to the 
uncreated good. Delight follows the perfect manifestation of this 
activity, but it is not the end sought, for the intellect seeks a good pre- 
eminently above delight. Thomas means that man seeks fulness of life 
through union with God, not merely the joy that accompanies this 
spiritually healthful relation. In the sense world of purely animal life, 
a different order prevails. Activities here are sought for the sake of 
delight, and God so established it in order that they might not be 
neglected. Thomas, though refusing to make pleasure the criterion of 
moral value in human life, gives it a very high recognition as a mark 
of wholesome functioning in the physical activities of man, as well as an 
essential element of social life. 2 

In the present life perfect happiness is not attainable, for the activity 
of the intellect in its highest form is interrupted. Neither intellect nor 
will, because of their infinite demands, can find full satisfaction in 
created good. Wealth, power, fame, honor are fleeting. They may or 
may not be the rewards of virtue. The truly satisfactory good must be 
one which cannot be lost. As the highest good it must satisfy man's 
highest faculty hence it is an activity of the understanding rather than 
of the will though both are involved, and it is of the speculative under- 
standing rather than of the practical, though in the earthly life both 
must be employed. Perfect happiness is essentially intuitive insight 
into the very essence of the First Cause. This is the heavenly vision, 
that most perfect activity of the divinely illumined soul, and it is activity 
not passivity. 3 

Though Thomas sees no possibility of perfect happiness in the 

1 Summa, I-II, 5~&; Contra Gent., Ill, 47-49, 73; IV, 92. 

3 Summa, I-II, 3-4. 

3 Ibid., I-II, 2-3; Contra Gent., Ill, 26, 45. 



56 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

present life, he teaches that there is much which may be called happiness, 
as involving noble activities accompanied by a delight higher than sense 
pleasure. Such are the activities of the mind in contemplation, in faith, 
in regulating the passions, and in directing the practical life. Even the 
activity of sense appetite when directed by reason becomes in a manner 
psychical, and productive of more than sense pleasure. Both in terms 
of wholesome activities, and in the feeling of satisfaction accompanying 
them, the immediate worth of life in the pilgrim city is estimated far more 
highly by Aquinas than by Augustine. Even play is very highly valued. 1 

(6) Love of self and of other selves. — Thomas makes free use of 
Augustine's classification of the two kinds of love, the higher of which is 
the love of friendship, the lower the love of desire. The former we shall 
afterward hear of as disinterested love or benevolence. It seeks the 
good of the beloved object, or rejoices in its welfare, or goodness, or 
glory. The lower form of love is love of desire. It seeks the object 
with reference to the use the seeker can make of it in securing his 
own welfare. The object is a mere means, not an end in itself. The 
angelic doctor is careful not to give the love of friendship too large a 
place. True love of our neighbor is love of friendship, and we ought to 
have it even to the extent of willingness to suffer material loss for his 
sake, but a man is bound in charity to love himself more than his neigh- 
bor. Yet a man is truly loving himself when he loves his neighbor 
because he thereby perfects his own spiritual nature. There is a sug- 
gestion here that he is looking to his own spiritual perfection rather than 
his neighbor's good, but this is softened somewhat by the fact that the 
"charity with which a man loves himself" is not love of an isolated self 
but love of the self as seen in relation to God who is the common good 
of all selves. Love to God is love of friendship more than it is love of 
desire. 3 

The hypothetical situation of a social universe containing but one 
man, who finds full satisfaction in union with God, does not fairly rep- 
resent the general attitude of St. Thomas. The latter finds a truer 
expression, and one in harmony with the conception of man's psychical 
nature, in the thought that happiness can be found only in the kingdom 
of God "which is the organized society of those who enjoy the vision 
of God."* 

In general St. Thomas places great emphasis on the social nature 
of man. He is a social and political animal as Aristotle said. His 

1 Contra Gent., Ill, 26, 45; Summa, II-II, 168:3. 

'Ibid., I-II, 77:4; II-II, 26:1-4. 3 Contra Gent., IV, 50. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 57 

outfit of instincts is not sufficient to maintain his existence even when 
supplemented by reason. Others must impart to him the collective 
experience of the race. His power of speech shows he was meant for 
society. But his social life is not merely of necessity. He desires 
praise, fears blame, and has an instinctive love for his fellow-man. In 
fact he is a friend and kinsman to every other man unless it happens 
that both are seeking a good that cannot be shared. Over and above 
the sexual and parental instincts common to animals, man has a natural 
inclination to live in society and in agreeable relations with his fellow- 
man. For the development of both his moral and religious life, repre- 
sented by Thomas respectively under the terms natural and theological 
virtues, he needs human help. "Of all things man can make use of the 
chief are other men." It is evident that Thomas regards the social 
environment as primary and the physical as secondary in human life. 1 

With St. Augustine, man was intensely social before his fall, and 
though capable of ardent and unselfish friendship iafterward, he was 
essentially not in harmony with his fellow-man until restored by grace. 
St. Thomas tells more fully why and how far men are social, and repre- 
sents the disturbing influence of man's fall as much less destructive. 
This we shall see in our next study — that of the social relations established 
and recognized by church and state, which give concreteness to the 
universal church or state. 

IV. SOCIAL AGENCIES IN THE KINGDOM OF NATURE AND IN THE 
KINGDOM OF GOD 

(1) The family. — The family has its psychological basis in a God- 
implanted natural instinct hence it cannot be evil. There are natural 
reasons also why the union of husband and wife should be permanent. 
Woman unaided could not provide for her offspring sufficiently during 
their long period of immaturity. Man, by virtue of his more perfect 
reasoning power, is better fitted to give them instruction, as well as to 
restrain from wrongdoing by admonition and punishment. Equity 
forbids that the husband should forsake the wife in her old age after 
their offspring are reared. Of the forms of union monogamy alone 
admits of a certain equality and friendship between a free man and a 
free woman. 2 

Church and state depend for their perpetuity upon marriage and 
hence both legislate concerning it. From the standpoint of the church 

1 De regimine principum, I, 1-2; Summa, I-II, 94: 2-3; II-II, 114: 1. 

2 Contra Gent., Ill, 122; IV, 78; Summa, II-II, 154:2. 



58 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

marriage is sacramental. The two parties bind themselves to mutual 
loyalty and to the education of their offspring in the faith. The church 
then bestows its blessing and divine grace is imparted. 

The family is but an imperfect community. The good of the 
household must be subordinate to the good of the state which is a perfect 
community. The rules which a father makes are not laws in the full 
sense of the term. He may punish the child but not to its permanent 
injury. Until the child reaches the age of reason he is under the full 
control of his parents, and with this control none may interfere, not even 
the church for the purpose of baptizing him. Baptism is necessary to 
give the child a share in the heavenly heritage, which Adam, like a 
disloyal knight, lost by a just forfeiture, leaving his descendants without 
valid claim to it. 1 

Thomas tries to prevent conflict between recognized social institu- 
tions. The child owes reverence to his parents and to his country next 
to God. He may not forsake his parents even to enter a religious life 
if they are in actual need of his services to provide for their necessities, 
but ordinarily the parent should provide for the child, not the reverse. 

(2) Monastic life. — Thomas considers celibacy from the social 
standpoint. Marriage is for the good of the species, but some may 
serve the community better through a celibate life, consecrated to God. 
The celibate who thus consecrates himself has much greater merit than 
the married, providing that he does not fall behind them in other virtues. 

All religious orders have as a common end the free and untrammeled 
service of God, but they vary widely in their specific purposes, ranging 
from devotion to military service and other active employments to a 
life almost wholly given to contemplation. Yet even the active life of 
a religious is directly related to the contemplative ideal and inspired 
by it. 2 

Aquinas neither feared nor desired that all should take vows. Prob- 
ably the collective wisdom gained in the intervening centuries helped 
him to see the truth here more clearly than did Augustine. Persons of 
strong passionate inclinations are much better fitted for active life, he 
said, and natural tendencies will prevent them from entering a religious 
order, from the rigorous obligations of which even many of those engaged 
in the care of souls are accustomed to shrink. 

Of the three monastic vows obedience ranks highest. (Here we see 
the tendency of Thomas to bring the monk under complete control of 

1 Summa, I-II, 90 : 3 ; II-II, 10:12; 65:2. 

* Ibid., II-II, 182:1-4; 188:2; Contra Gent., Ill, 133-39. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 59 

his superior, and of superiors in turn under that of the head of the church 
on earth, a principle which might and did prove a veritable two-edged 
sword in social life.) Chastity and poverty may be subsumed under 
obedience as specific forms of it. The religious does not claim perfection 
but he puts himself under the best possible conditions for attaining it: 
negatively by removing the three great hindrances, positively by taking 
up the good work of his particular order. 

The double standard of Christian life known as precepts and counsels 
is worked out much more fully by Aquinas than by Augustine. The 
counsels bind only those who have made an entire consecration, that is 
to say "have offered themselves as a holocaust to God." The precepts 
are binding for all Christians. Some have seen in the adoption of this 
double standard an imitation of later Stoicism which was compelled to 
admit that its ideal man, the "wise man," was rarely found, and that a 
much less perfect being was very valuable to the universal state in spite 
of the fact that he could not rule with absolute sway in his own inner 
kingdom. In both cases it was a tacit admission that the ideal held up 
was not attainable for the mass of mankind, therefore not a good working 
principle for a universal brotherhood. 

Augustine once said that the solitary may perform a great social 
service through his prayers, and through his contempt for earthly 
pleasures, yet it is evident that both he and Aquinas were trying to 
socialize monasticism more completely so as to make it contribute to the 
welfare of the whole church in additional ways. Thomas classes the 
solitary life as most dangerous if it be entered upon without training, 
for which community life is necessary. Solitude befits those who are 
already perfect, but a perfect man may be called from a life of con- 
templation to the very active life of a bishop. 1 

Thomas admitted that under natural law manual labor is incumbent 
upon all, but he did not think it necessary for all the members of a 
religious community. " The flesh may be macerated " by other exercises, 
among them study. It is quite probable that he did not see in manual 
labor so much of wholesome joy and useful service as Augustine did, but 
the latter was the son of a poor farmer, and in the veins of the former 
flowed the blood of two royal houses. Neither did Aquinas fear like 
Augustine that living from alms would work injury. 

As a Dominican and as a profound student Thomas naturally wished 
to give study a large place in monastic life. Its negative value is great. 
"The labor of study turns the mind from wantonness and wears down 

1 Summa, II-II, 188:1-8. 



60 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

the flesh." It also saves from errors to which contemplatives are prone. 
It has a positive value in that it furnishes weapons for the spiritual 
warfare against heresy, much more valuable than material weapons. 
Thomas had not reached the conception that spiritual weapons are not 
merely the best but the only weapons to be used against heresy, and 
that even they may be used cruelly. Sciences not distinctly religious 
are recognized as having an indirect worth. 1 

In the bitter fight which the friars waged to win the right to teach 
publicly and to preach Thomas had been a leader. He saw in these 
employments nothing incompatible with the vows of monks, but, on the 
contrary, the monk is thereby afforded a much broader field of service 
than his lonely cell can give. Again we see in Thomas the effort to 
open a wider sphere of activity for monastic life. Older orders not 
admitting such service may be so reconstructed as to allow it, he says. 
The contemplative who gives to others the results of his contemplation 
is better than he who only contemplates without sharing the results. 

(3) The state: Its origin, form, and rulers. — The problem of the state 
was of tremendous significance to Aquinas. It was by no means merely 
a question of the relation of the ruler to the pope. The old feudal order 
was breaking down. The welfare of the universal church demanded 
strong, well organized constitutional governments in the respective 
states. Without these their union under the pope would be largely 
barren. The genius of Thomas perceived this clearly. It is through 
his recognition of moral virtues and political activity as noble, even if 
not supremely so, that he did more to counteract an excessive other 
worldliness than through any definite conception of the proper balance 
between contemplation and action. Henceforth the state is a highly 
honored means for the realization of the kingdom of God on earth. 

In advocating the supremacy of sacerdotium over imperium the 
Gregorians were fond of asserting that the state had its origin in fraud 
and violence, quoting Augustine in favor of this view. Thomas directly 
opposed this doctrine, claiming that the state would arise among men 
in an ideal condition of moral health. Man is social by nature and is 
impelled both by economic and by spiritual needs to live in society. 
Society life without order and a recognized common good is impossible. 
Among men there could not but be disparity. The physical environment 
would directly cause variation in human bodies and therefore indirectly 
in human minds. Freedom of choice would result in variation of appli- 
cation to particular pursuits and consequently in difference of mental 

I Summa, II-II, 181-83; 166-67; 181:1-8. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 6 1 

development. Then there would be natural disparity from variation of 
age and sex, in fact the perfection of the divine order demands the 
greatest possible variation. Even without sin or defect some would 
naturally surpass others in justice and wisdom, and it would be very 
deleterious to the public welfare if such persons were not employed to 
direct affairs. In this sense dominion of man over man is essential; and 
the ruler is an expert who directs others for the sake of the common 
welfare. To explain Augustine's position the scholastic dupliciter is 
used, a somewhat pragmatic way of asserting that the truth of a state- 
ment depends upon the standpoint from which it is regarded. Domin- 
ion, in the sense of master over slave, could not have existed in an 
ideal condition, but a just ruler over free men is not in the relation of 
master to servants. The individual must never be exploited by the 
ruler, but may be directed toward such conduct as the common good 
demands, which is always inclusive of his own. With Thomas the ideal 
state is in many senses a kingdom of ends. He gives no theory of the 
origin of actually existing states, but he leaves fallen man with sufficient 
moral virtue, wholesome instinct, and use of reason to account for their 
rise without assuming any general condition of unendurable violence 
and 1 fear. It seems however to be a favorite idea with him that a 
monarch may be the creator of the constitution of his state through his 
superior statesmanship, and of a constitution, too, which foresees the 
evil day and avoids it by putting legal restrictions upon the monarch 
in the interests of civil liberty. 1 

From the standpoint of unity monarchy is the ideal form of the 
state. As God rules over the world and the soul over the body, so it is 
fitting that one should rule over the state. But when a monarch forgets 
his high and holy mission and seeks only his own advantage then mon- 
archy degenerates and becomes the worst form of tyranny but not the 
only form. The aristocracy and the democracy are two other very 
commendable forms of government, but they also may degenerate, the 
former into an oligarchy, the latter into anarchy or mob rule. Their 
degeneration is often more rapid than that of the monarchy. A mixed 
polity giving recognition to all three of the former just mentioned is 
recommended as best adapted to the conservation of the public welfare 
especially among a highly cultured people. A constitutional monarch 
may stand for unity. A body of subordinate rulers or senate chosen on 
account of virtue or fitness will express what is valuable in an aristoc- 
racy, and the fact that the rulers are chosen from the people and by 

1 Ibid., I, 96-97; Contra Gent., Ill, 81. 



62 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

the people would give all active citizens a share in the government and 
therefore more interest in it and loyalty to it — the crowning virtues of 
a democracy. An elective monarchy is better than a hereditary form 
as it affords a better guaranty of civil liberty by giving the people greater 
control. Whatever form of government is chosen careful provision 
should be made against tyranny so that in case of degeneration a legal 
remedy may be at hand. It is not sinful to revolt against a tyrant; it 
may be sinful not to do so; but when there is no higher power to whom 
appeal can be made and where the constitution of the state does not 
permit the deposition of a ruler it is better to endure tyranny, not 
however without prayer to God for deliverance from it, than to resort 
to tyrannicide. The latter usually aggravates rather than heals the 
disease of the body politic. Thomas evidently sought hard to find a 
guaranty for civil liberty, the conservation of which remained an unsolved 
problem for many centuries. The difficulty of the problem was keenly 
felt by many in the thirteenth century who found it easier to obtain than 
to retain chartered liberties. 1 

Thomas asserts most emphatically that the function of a ruler is 
purely representative in making law, in administering it with equity, and 
in dispensing with existing laws when the latter is imperatively demanded 
for the sake of the common welfare. Anything not done for the common 
welfare is illegally done. 

The duties assigned to a ruler below, most of them taken from a 
treatise written for the king of Cyprus, may in accordance with the spirit 
of Thomas be interpreted as resting on all who participate in governing. 2 

If the ruler is founding a new state he should select its locality with 
great care. Environmental influences are very powerful, but yet man 
is not the mere creature of his physical environment as history well 
illustrates. The ideal city should be surrounded by a fertile agricultural 
region. This is necessary in war and highly valuable in peace, for 
commerce though to some extent desirable has serious dangers. The 
presence of foreign merchants tends to disturb the customary order. 
Citizens who engage in trade learn to place money values above moral 
values, lose their interest in public service, and become unfit for military 
service. 

The ruler should not neglect esthetic considerations in selecting the 
site for his city or realm, for life cannot be long maintained without 

1 De regimine principum I, 3-1 1; De regimine Judaeorum, 6; Summa, I-II, 95:4; 
96-97; 105:1. 

2 De regimine princ, I-II. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 63 

pleasure — a by no means isolated expression of the joy loving nature of 
Thomas. A wide extended plain with an outlook of neighboring moun- 
tains, and with fruit trees, beautiful forests, and streams is desirable. 
But here Thomas, the ascetic, adds the warning that the people must 
not give themselves over too completely to the enjoyment of natural 
beauties, lest they should thereby become sensualized. 

Another important duty of the ruler is to provide for the education 
of youth by selecting suitable sites for universities and schools. Thomas 
seems to have the general idea that the state should provide for education 
such as the public welfare demands. It is characteristic of a tyrant 
to try to repress culture lest leaders may be developed who will be able 
to overthrow his rule. 

The chief duty of a ruler is to establish a bond of peace and unity 
among his people. He must also provide for defense against external 
foes. It is the duty of the government to see that none of its subjects 
shall want the necessities of life. The ruler himself should be very rich 
so that he may not be tempted to tax his people unless in accordance 
with constitutional restrictions or in great public danger. 

Thomas had as lofty a conception of the dignity of rulers as he had 
of their duties. It is to be feared that the conception of the former may 
have worked to negate the latter, though such was far from his intention. 
His statement that the power of a ruler is similar to that of the soul over 
body and of God over the world was not altogether happy. Selfish men 
were prone to interpret it to mean that as soul is of vastly more worth 
than body, and God immeasurably greater and nobler than his creatures, 
so also is the king far above his subjects. In a better sense Aquinas did 
put the ruler too far above the subject. The dutiful king is much more 
worthy of honor and reward from God and man than his most dutiful 
subject. Thomas partly excuses the deification of good kings in 
former times. 

What Thomas really meant to do was to stir up rulers to do a work 
which he thought, and thought with much truth, could be done by no 
one else in his time. It was not impossible to hope for great things from 
rulers in the days of St. Louis. But though Thomas thought the exalta- 
tion of the people must come mainly from above, he also believed that 
culture would finally render them fit for self-government in a large 
degree, and produce natural leaders among them who could successfully 
protest against maladministration of political affairs. 

To incite rulers to social service of a very high type Thomas compared 
them with God, in that it was in their power to diffuse goodness over so 



64 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

wide a field. A reward commensurate with their virtue was promised 
them as certain to be given them in the after life. They would probably 
have also the "best possible earthly reward in the good-will of their 
subjects," and a more material reward in rich gifts brought to them 
freely. The Aristotelian rewards, fame and honor, are declared insuf- 
ficient, because fleeting, and also because he who seeks fame is likely to 
lose the spiritual independence necessary for leadership. 

(4) Positive law and natural law. — The task which presented itself to 
Thomas with respect to law was one that demanded careful considera- 
tion. Interest in law was keen in all civilized Europe. The relation of 
the law and authority of the state to that of the church required definition 
but that was by no means the whole problem before Thomas. The 
Christian statesman as such needed a clear conception of the nature 
and province of law, and this Thomas gave him. 

Thomas defines law as an expression of both reason and will thus 
combining two earlier views. It is "an ordinance of reason for the 
general good, emanating from him who has the care of the community, 
and promulgated." As the state derives its origin from elements found 
in man in his natural condition so also its laws should rest on a natural 
foundation. Before the positive law existed, and of higher authority 
than it, natural law existed. In the forum of conscience no man-made 
law can have validity if it is antagonistic to natural law. Positive law 
may be valid when very different from natural law, but it must never 
oppose it. The ruler is above positive law in that it does not have 
coercive force over him but it does have directive force. He is below 
natural law and if his edicts violate it his subjects are not bound to 
obey him. 1 

The precepts of natural law are judgments given in the natural 
tribunal of reason upon those things toward which man has natural 
inclinations. Naturally man tends to subject his inclinations to the 
control of reason which is to live virtuously. These inclinations as 
originally implanted in man were the expression of the eternal reason, 
and were in perfect subjection to human reason. Natural law may 
refer to the reason guided impulse or to the precepts which serve as rules 
of guidance. It is promulgated by the light of natural reason, and has 
all the necessary marks of law. 

The law of nature in its most general precepts cannot be blotted out 
of the heart of man though passion may prevent the application of these 
universal rules to a particular case. In its secondary precepts the natural 

I Summa, I-II, 90-97; II— II, 57. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 65 

law may be destroyed or obscured by evil persuasions, vicious customs, 
and corrupt habits. These secondary precepts may in rare cases be set 
aside legitimately when their application brings about a conflict with 
a larger good. 

Positive law is a development of natural law just in so far as it meets 
the requirements of right reason. This it does not always do, because 
human judgment is weak, and is often obscured by passion. As a 
legitimate development of natural law it adds material of great value in 
that it prescribes virtuous acts to which nature does not at first incline 
but which reason finds conducive to happiness. When it fails to be a 
true development of natural law, as it may be either in its first formu- 
lation, or later on because of the changed circumstances of the people, 
it should be changed but never lightly, for long continuance conduces 
to a proper reverence for law. 

Positive law by its penalties may inculcate virtue in an indirect way, 
in that a right action done through fear at first, if repeatedly done may 
become habitual, and as such pleasant to the doer, and as a result may 
finally be properly appreciated and freely chosen. 

But in its educative capacity law must have due regard for human 
weakness and give only such precepts as the multitude are able to bear. 
If the standard is not thus adjusted to the particular situation evil will 
be provoked rather than remedied. Because of this positive human law 
deals only with such virtuous and vicious acts as are evidently useful or 
deleterious to the public welfare. 

The framing of a law may be the work of the ruler, but always with 
reference to his representative capacity, or it may be done by a large 
representative body, or by the whole people. If the constitution of the 
state does not permit the people to make laws a custom which the ruler 
does not interfere with while it is becoming established has the force of 
a law. The principle that Thomas here speaks was often used in the 
interest of civil liberty in the Middle Ages, by the people demanding in 
the name of immemorial custom the abolition of an offensive law, or 
even in the name of custom established in a well known period the 
confirmation of privileges permitted by a generous ruler. But on the 
other hand it is just the evil that is crystallized in custom or rapidly 
becoming so that progressive law-making should deal with. Thomas' 
real intention here is to guarantee civil liberty but elsewhere in common 
with Augustine he places too great emphasis on the sanctity of custom, 
for instance in placing the custom of the church as above the authority 
of her wisest men, and in thus making impossible the reconstruction 
essential to growth. 



66 A KINGDOM ON ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

Human law as conceived by Thomas might restrain the individual 
from certain acts deleterious to the public good, and compel him to 
perform others for the public good, but it dealt with a limited sphere of 
his activities. He was left free for others in the name of natural right. 
This right of the individual holds good to some extent even with the 
slave. While this freedom which Thomas left to the individual was to 
a considerable extent formal rather than real still it was well that formal 
recognition should be given to man's essential worth and dignity as 
having within himself an expression of a law older and more binding in 
the forum of conscience than the laws which were made for him in most 
cases by representatives whom he had no voice in choosing. Thomas, 
though he follows Aristotle in many respects, goes beyond him here. 
Stoicism, Christianity, and German love of liberty all had contributed 
to make it impossible to look upon the slave as merely "animate 
property " who is in no sense an end in himself. Nor could the mechani- 
cal artisan be regarded as entirely out of the natural order and lower 
than the slave in the scale of virtue. But the fact that Thomas regarded 
slavery as non-existent and inconsistent with man's ideal condition 
before the Fall must not be interpreted to mean that he deemed it irra- 
tional and unjustifiable afterward. He admitted its rationality and 
utility, striving however to limit its oppressiveness, and giving to the 
slave as did the Stoic whatever benefit might come from the assertion 
that in the inner citadel of will he might be a free and an active citizen 
of the highest realm. Thomas follows Aristotle in limiting active 
citizenship in the political state so as to shut out the farmer, the mer- 
chant, and the manual laborer. Yet all laws were to be referred to the 
good of all hence they were given recognition as passive citizens. 1 

Augustine and Aquinas both taught the right of private property 
but Aquinas the more strongly defends it and seems less disturbed by its 
unequal distribution. From the standpoint of Augustine it could not 
have existed in the original state of justice. From that of Aquinas it 
had not yet developed but was not contrary to natural law. Both 
taught that in the state of perfection, under the counsels, there should 
be common possessions or poverty. Both emphasized the claim of the 
poor upon the rich and denied the exclusive use of property. Thomas 
refuses to classify as theft the taking of another's goods in case of extreme 
need in order to sustain life, for natural law is above positive law. 

(5) The church as world state. — Augustine's ethical and political 
theories are evidently secondary to the religious. His thought, as it 

1 Summa, II-II, 57; 104; Aristotle Politics i. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 67 

were, travels along a route plainly marked with milestones showing the 
distance and direction to the kingdom where all ends are realized. St. 
Thomas gives a relatively independent treatment of politics and ethics. 
His milestones are marked "to political welfare" or "to the moral 
virtues" but if we travel far enough we find that the all important final 
terminus for man as viator is futura felicitas in patria. The political 
state wherein the moral virtues flourish is indeed a kingdom of ends 
wherein the welfare of all is the law for each, but not a kingdom of 
final ends, using the term end as Aquinas uses it. The end which man 
seeks is not realized here but in an eternal kingdom. 

It is because of the superiority of the final end, felicity in the father- 
land of souls, that the ecclesiastical state ranks higher than the political 
state, and the divinely revealed law above the human positive law. 
Those who have care for the final end must have precedence over those 
who have the care of antecedent ends. In Old Testament times it was 
not so. Then kings ranked above priests for only earthly ends were 
then sought. 

The ecclesiastical state is a universal empire. Infidels are accounted 
its members in potentia though they may never actually unite with it. 
The spiritual headship of Christ is not sufficient to secure the unity of 
the church as world state. The pope is his representative on earth, and 
"to him kings should render obedience as to the Lord Jesus Christ" 
who was himself both king and priest. The chief pontiff is the head of 
the mystic body Of all the faithful with plenitude of grace and power 
both spiritual and temporal, for the latter depends upon the former just 
as the operation of the body depends upon the mind. He may relieve 
subjects from their oath of allegiance to temporal rulers when govern- 
ment ceases to conform to spiritual standards. Thomas says nothing 
about two swords of spiritual and of temporal power. He simply states 
as if beyond question the superiority of the spiritual ruler because of the 
superior interests intrusted to him. 1 

(6) Relation of divinely revealed law to natural and to positive law. — 
Similar to the relation of the ecclesiastical state to the political is the 
relation of revealed law to natural and positive law. As man has a 
supernatural end, to attain it the guidance of natural law must be 
supplemented by that of the divine. Even in its own sphere natural 
law is easily obscured by passion and interest. Positive law deals with 
exterior acts. Its aim is to inculcate justice and enforce it by repressing 

1 Summa, III, 8:3; Dereg., I, 14-15; Contra Gent., IV, 76; Quaestiones quod libet, 
VI, 13; Sententiae, II, 44; Summa, II-II, 12:2. 



68 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

the graver vices, but it cannot deal with interior acts or make men love 
and help each other, hence it is not sufficient for the universal state. 
The divine law also serves to give direction where men differ in 
judgment. 1 

The natural law is a part of the divine eternal law revealed by the 
inner light of reason, and man's inclination to follow it shows that he is 
subject to the eternal law, but without divine revelation his notion of it 
is inadequate, and without grace his inclination too weak to follow it 
fully. The divine law is given both as precepts and as counsels. Obedi- 
ence to the counsels is highly meritorious. Augustine also had taught 
this but made much less of that form of social mediation whereby the 
spiritual wealth of the saints may be transferred to their weaker brethren. 

(7) Authority of the church and of reason. — To the Dominican heart 
nothing was dearer than the preservation of the Catholic faith threatened 
as it was by heresies from within and without the church. How could 
he show that attacks made upon his faith were unjustified ? The best 
answer to the problem was that he should state his faith in as rational 
terms as possible, that he should reconcile contradictions in earlier 
teaching by admitting partial truths in both views, or when this could 
not be done, by rejecting the view least in harmony with the whole 
body of doctrine. To this there was a serious limitation as we shall see 
later, but yet in the writings of St. Thomas there was sufficient success 
in following the above plan to confirm faith in the possible reconciliation 
of dogma and reason and to discourage that dualistic belief already 
making its appearance as the doctrine of the twofold truth. It was at 
once the scholastic thesis, and especially that of St. Thomas, as well 
as a partially justified conclusion, that natural reason is not contrary 
to the truths of faith, but that some of these truths are beyond the 
comprehension of reason. Many of them are so to the great majority 
who therefore must receive them on authority, but some of these which 
are incomprehensible to the untrained thinker the trained thinker can 
think through satisfactorily; hence there is a reasonable presumption 
that if the trained thinker were better trained or if his reason were 
perfect, faith and reason would be in perfect agreement. In the mean- 
time he must take a practical attitude toward these truths not yet 
proved but held by the church which is an organization with high and 
holy principles, hence he may accept her teachings when he cannot as 
yet understand them rationally. 

Such an attitude was not inconsistent with openness of mind and 

1 Summa, I-II, 91; III, 5:3. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 69 

zeal for truth, both of which St. Thomas possessed in a remarkably high 
degree. But along with the spirit which maketh alive there was also 
the letter that killeth. The latter expresses itself in such dogmatic 
assertions as that he who does not regard the teachings of the church as 
an infallible and divine rule, and he who holds to such parts as he likes 
and refuses to hold what he dislikes has not the habit of faith. Similarly 
worship contrary to the rite of the church is severely condemned, and 
the greatest possible authority is declared to be attached "to the custom 
of the church which is always to be followed in all things." 

It was this unwillingness to admit any suggestion of change in 
custom and dogma that led Thomas to assert that heretics deserve not 
only excommunication but also punishment by death, and that apostates 
are to be compelled to fulfil what they have promised and to hold fast 
that which they have received. However those who have never received 
the faith are not on any account to be brought to it by compulsion. 
Now in accordance with the psychology of Thomas, faith and unbelief 
are both of the will. No creature rational or irrational can force a man's 
will, and God never does force it. How the forced retention of the 
apostate in a living bond of faith could be brought about is not explained, 
but it is very evident that such retention is impossible in that spiritual 
state known as a kingdom of ends. 1 

(8) The sacraments. — Thomas places much more emphasis than 
Augustine upon the sacraments as a means of spiritual life. The figure 
of the church as organism or mystic body is freely used. Thomas 
defines a sacrament as the deliverance of a spiritual thing under a 
corporal sign. Baptism is the means for incorporating new members; 
confirmation stands for spiritual growth; the eucharist for nourishment; 
penance and extreme unction for healing; orders for the propagation 
and conservation of spiritual life. Grace is bestowed in the sacraments 
but Thomas recognizes that it may be given when there is full intention 
to take them before they are actually taken. 2 

The high value placed on the sacraments as means of maintaining 
spiritual life indicates a falling away from the spiritual conception of 
Augustine but this had taken place before Thomas wrote. The priest- 
hood by its mediation in administering the sacraments had been exalted 
far above the laity to the injury of both classes. A religion so largely 
dependent on external rites tended to neglect the weightier matters of 
the law, and could not make all of its adherents active members of a 
kingdom of ends. 

1 Ibid., 11-11, 5; 10:8; 11:4. 2 Contra Gent., IV, 56-72. 



70 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

(9) The virtues. — We have seen that Thomas made possible a rela- 
tively independent ethics by representing man as naturally inclined 
toward virtue, even after the wound inflicted on the race by the 
original sin. The natural virtues are found in us in rudimentary form, 
though passion and vicious habits hinder their development. No man 
is wholly without them. They may all be subsumed under the four 
cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. To 
become perfect virtues they must become habits. 

The infused or theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity, are 
superhuman virtues produced in us by God without our action but not 
without our consent. They are nobler than other virtues because they 
lead to blessedness. The presence of the theological virtues means 
healing of the wound of sin to some extent, hence freer development of 
the moral virtues. Thomas gives the theological virtues a high social 
value for the present life. Justice he regards as keeping men from getting 
in each other's way. It does not provide for helping others in their 
need. For this love is necessary. 

Thus far Thomas completes his structure of thought by placing the 
ecclesiastical state above the political state, the revealed law above 
positive and natural law, and the infused virtues above the natural 
virtues, because the higher place belongs to that which bears more 
directly on the life after death. 1 

V. THE DUALISM OF CONTEMPLATION AND ACTION 

Two moments are noticeable in the opinion of Thomas upon con- 
templatives. As against a life of action, such as would come under 
precepts not counsels, and even as against a life under monastic vows, 
but in an order devoted to works of a very active type such as military 
service, hospitality, etc., he urges the superiority of a life of contempla- 
tion, always however in a most conciliatory way, admitting good in 
what he opposes, but claiming that there is something much more 
excellent in what he advocates. Life in the world is lower and very 
much lower than any contemplative life, yet best suited to the majority. 
Life in an order where there is much action and little contemplation is 
lower than in one in which there is more contemplation. But as against 
a life wholly devoted to contemplation Thomas urges the claims of 
action, in perfect loyalty to the principles of his order; it is however of 
action as inspired by contemplation, especially, but not exclusively, 
preaching and teaching. 

1 Summa, I-II, 58; 61-62; II-II, 81; 92; Contra Gent., Ill, 130. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 7 1 

A real difficulty confronted Thomas, coming from the accepted view 
of the final goal of man as contemplation or vision of God. Here the 
contemplative life is recognized as the perfect life, as its own all sufficient 
and most worthy end. It is not a means and to make it a means to 
anything else is to degrade it. Naturally the life most like it on earth 
must be the perfect life. Hence Thomas himself says, "Nothing in this 
life is so like that final and perfect happiness as the life of those who 
contemplate truth as far as possible. For the contemplation of truth 
begins in this life but will be consummated in the life to come, whereas 
the life of action and the political life do not transcend the bounds of 
the present life." 1 

This view of the truly divine life as a life of contemplation came 
down from both Plato and Aristotle, though no doubt they would have 
both admitted that in human life while contemplation is not practiced 
directly for the sake of action yet it is a powerful determinant of action 
in that it strengthens spiritual forces which afterward express themselves 
in noble activities. The neo-Platonic emphasis on contemplation is 
well known. Augustine modified it somewhat for the future life and a 
great deal for the present life. Men mighty in both contemplation and 
action were needed, he thought. And sometimes they were found. 
Certainly Augustine and Aquinas must both be so classed. Neo- 
Platonic contemplation however without much modification was also 
found. Men sought heavenly visions in isolation from social life and 
under these abnormal conditions the visions were often quite other than 
heavenly. Hence Thomas says solitary life is only for those who have 
attained perfection, and even for life in a monastic community the mass 
of mankind are not well fitted. 

The history of monasticism in the Christian church is, notwith- 
standing some retroactive movements, a history of steady advance in 
the direction of larger social service and more varied fields of activity. 
The life of the hermit devoted wholly to contemplation gave way to 
organized brotherhoods ever becoming more and more universal in their 
relations. The latest link in this chain of development was, in the 
thirteenth century, the friars. Though called contemplatives they were 
intensely active, yet their action was in a sense all to be referred to 
contemplation. 

That contemplation should be so much more directly connected 
with action than inthe earliest monastic period is probably in part due 
to a change in the content of contemplation. Instead of being centered 

1 Ibid., Ill, 73. 



72 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

on the more abstract metaphysical attributes of the Supreme Being it 
was turned toward the life and suffering of Christ. It was this which 
determined St. Francis to labor for others. It was probably this which 
occasioned that disinterested love of God described by Bernard of 
Clairvaux a century earlier and later found in so many mystics as a love 
"which casts out fear, feels no toil, asks no rewards, and yet carries with 
it a mightier constraint than all else beside." 1 

Aristotle's view of contemplation as usually stated did not tend to 
further the development of the contemplative orders in the direction of 
greater activity. To Thomas he was "the philosopher," and his eight 
marks of the superiority of the contemplative life were unquestioningly 
accepted. Aristotle was indeed speaking of a somewhat different con- 
templation but there was a real agreement with Aquinas nevertheless. 
Both looked upon it as the exercise of a faculty superior to the exercise 
of any practical or moral virtue. Contemplation differentiates man 
from the animals as employing a faculty these do not possess. Similarly 
it unites him with the divine, for it is the chief or the only activity of 
the gods, or of God. It is accompanied by superior delight, and all 
other activities may be subsumed under it as contributing to it, while 
it remains as an end in itself. The help of other men is not. needed for 
its exercise — a view hardly consistent with the statement that man is 
through and through a social and political animal. 

In spite of his acceptance of the Aristotelian definition Thomas really 
did make advance in the conception of contemplation. He saw that 
for man on earth at least it must have a reference to action, and that an 
exclusively contemplative life as in the case of the solitary is exceed- 
ingly dangerous for many monks, also that the ordinary contemplative 
life in a religious order is not suited to the majority of men, because by 
nature they are too much inclined to action. At the same time he does 
not forget the superior sweetness of contemplation which perhaps was 
indelibly impressed upon his mind by his boyhood life in the Benedictine 
monastery on Monte Cassino. Devoting oneself with delight to con- 
templation remains the superior mark of the higher Christian life, yet 
it must be accompanied by willingness to turn away temporarily from 
its sweetness to do the will of God in relieving others, an example of 
which he, like St. Francis, found in the life of Christ. Thomas always 
falls somewhat short in grasping the thought that the God who is con- 
templated is the God who wills, and that there ought to be as much joy 
in doing his will as in the exercise of contemplation, but he does partially 

1 Bernard of Clairvaux, De diligendo Deo, 107. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 73 

grasp it, in the thought that it is abounding love which stimulates to the 
sacrifice — always however to sacrifice much more emphatically than to 
joyous service or co-operation. Until such a conception of the divine 
as manifested in will quite as much as in intellect was reached there 
could be no proper balance between contemplation and action. Their 
antagonism rather than their co-operation would necessarily be promi- 
nent even when both received some recognition, and there would be a 
corresponding dualism in the kingdom of ends whether conceived as 
church or as state. 

VI. THE SUPERNATURAL END 

After life for the wicked means only penalty, a little less material 
than that of Augustine but on the whole very similar, as are also the 
reasons justifying eternal punishment. Thomas would not admit 
predestination of the lost. Reprobation in the sense of permitting man 
to fall and come under penalty is allowed. He also talks much less of 
future penalties than Augustine did. 

The most striking difference between Thomas and Augustine is in 
regard to the future of unbaptized infants, the former by degrees reject- 
ing, the doctrine of the latter. At first he rejected the penalty of pain 
inflicted through sense upon infants for a deed done by another, but 
thought they might be aware of their loss of the supernatural vision. 
He later concluded that they had no knowledge of their loss, but might 
have more knowledge than when on earth, and participate to some 
extent in natural goods. 1 

Thomas accepts a thoroughly organized purgatory. Its purpose is 
the expiation of temporal penalties for which the work of penance has 
not been complete. 

For the good, future felicity in the fatherland is a naturale desiderium. 
The universe would be irrational without it. In the present life we 
naturally desire the highest felicity, and we cannot obtain it, hence the 
desiderium, which, as nature makes nothing in vain, must be filled. 
Thomas speaks less frequently of "the fatherland" than Augustine does 
of "the heavenly city," and also less passionately, yet he gives abundant 
evidence of a deep-centered emotion, an insatiable longing for the after 
life — the "heavenly homesickness" so strongly felt in the Middle Ages 
but not limited to that period. 

Felicity is in the intellect rather than in the will. It consists for 
every intellectual creature in knowing God through his essence. The 

1 Appendix to Summa, V, 1-2; Sententiae, II, 33 : 2; De malo, V, 2-3. 



74 A KINGDOM OP ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

power to do this must come from God. In his light we shall see life. 
Thomas represents the employment of the after life as distinctly intel- 
lectual but of a character not known to us through experience since it 
is an exercise of the intellect higher than that of reasoning. It has an 
immediacy which the latter cannot have. 1 

VII. GENERAL CRITICISM 

(i) Aquinas like Augustine conceived the universe as founded in 
eternal goodness, but at the same time both represented the Father of 
spirits as forming an eternal plan which failed to include the vast 
majority of the human race in the eternal good of citizenship in the 
fatherland of souls. Aquinas sins the less grievously against the con- 
ception of divine fatherhood, since he teaches that unbaptized infants, 
though not given a heritage in the fatherland, are preserved in a region 
where they do not suffer and may to some extent participate in the 
divine goodness by sharing natural joys. He also, though not with 
marked success, represents the exclusion of others as more distinctly a 
thing permitted by the divine plan and dependent upon human choice, 
than as predestined and absolutely inevitable without respect to human 
choice, a conclusion which Augustine had made some effort to avoid. 
It cannot be said that Thomas succeeds in making the character of the 
founder of the church appear just and impartial. 

(2) Aquinas leaves the individual with moral initiative sufficient 
for a rather imperfect kingdom of ends wherein the common good is 
sought and true moral virtues abound; he also escapes the sharp denial 
of moral initiative with respect to the more perfect eternal kingdom. 
Augustine denied that virtues in the unregenerate could be true virtues, 
and though recognizing the political state as a good he fell far short of 
reaching the position taken by Aquinas, who saw that love to God and 
one's neighbor must be rendered concrete, partly by manifesting itself 
in the political state, and that a true universal church must realize itself 
in institutions which are to some extent local and temporary. 

(3) Similarly in the larger recognition given to the family and family 
relations as moral and essential to the perpetuity of both church and 
state, Thomas far surpasses Augustine. This vision of a concrete unity 
expressing itself through already existent social institutions rendered 
Thomas much more optimistic than Augustine, who never anticipated 
even an approximately perfect earthly society, though he did hope for 
some improvement. 

1 Contra Gent., Ill, 48, 52. 



AQUINAS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 75 

(4) In his effort to make the unity of the universal church more 
concrete Thomas places too great stress on elements which have but a 
symbolic value and which had already become bonds hindering the 
growth of spirit, rather than instruments for its expansion. It is, 
however, but just to say that in the historic church Thomas really 
represents a reaction toward the more spiritualistic view of Augustine, 
though he places tremendous emphasis upon the function of the 
sacraments. 

(5) In his sharper differentiation between counsels and precepts 
Thomas more emphatically than Augustine recognizes and strengthens 
a discordant element in the universal church. A kingdom of ends is 
essentially a kingdom of one law and one standard, admitting indeed of 
growth and reconstruction, but not placing its members under different 
degrees of obligation toward its ideal, and thereby tending toward a 
disruption of social unity by assuming a higher and holier function for 
one part of its active members than for another. 

(6) It is a real element of value in the view of Aquinas that he 
recognizes a true universal church as necessarily involving very complex 
differentiation and integration. The defect which he had in far greater 
measure than Augustine is in his failure to recognize equal worth in the 
differentiated factors. This shows itself in many ways, among them in 
the evidently greater merit assigned to the contemplative than to the 
active life. Parallel to this is the exclusion from active participation in 
the earthly state of certain classes recognized as essential to its welfare 
yet not esteemed worthy of sharing in its highest exercise of liberty, or, 
in other words, of active citizenship in the perfect political community. 

(7) Another defect in the view of St. Thomas, which really kept 
him from understanding the essential injustice of his class divisions, is 
one which Augustine also had in some measure and which is yet all too 
prevalent in modern times. It might be called the fallacy of abstract 
good-will. We have seen that Thomas clearly recognizes that sover- 
eignty is inherent in the people, that the function of the ruler is repre- 
sentative, and that he is false to his trust and to the divine obligation 
resting upon him when he forgets this representative character. The 
fallacy lies in the assumption that representation of another is mainly a 
matter of good-will toward him. The analogy of God in the world and 
of the soul in the body are misleading for in both cases the hypothesis is 
that there is thorough knowledge of the elements to be ruled. The soul 
becomes keenly aware of the bodily needs and suffers when they are 
not recognized, and a fair adjustment of claims made. A ruler or 



76 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

representative may have good-will but it must be in many respects 
empty of content without a social interaction which even yet we have 
not fully attained, and which was much farther removed from possibility 
in the period in which Aquinas lived. Hence obedience, either of the 
citizen in church or in state to an earthly ruler, was not always conducive 
to real growth of the mystic body, whether conceived as church or 
as state. 

(8) The crowning defect of the system of Thomas is in its absolute 
exclusion of reconstructive influences from the mystic body or universal 
church by the static conception of the infallible authority of dogma and 
custom. Reflection is here left functionless, though in the life of the 
individual its high value is recognized especially in the insistence upon 
self-consciousness as essential to moral habit, where it evidently means, 
though Thomas does not use the phrase, possibility of directing and 
reconstructing habit. By this restriction of freedom of thought the 
universal state was deprived of an element required for its growth as an 
organism whether through the taking up and assimilation of external 
elements, or through a more perfect differentiation of its parts for new 
and more varied activities, or for the rejection of elements no longer 
essential. A temporary and external unity was gained but at a ruinous 
price. Though Augustine makes this limitation on freedom of thought 
he does it far less emphatically. 

But while the system of Thomas is sadly defective here, there was 
within it a saving factor. Thomas gives tremendous emphasis to 
reason; he examines freely and tries to do justice to views quite different 
from his own, and very often appeals to reason not to authority to settle 
the controversy. Notwithstanding the fact that he held more extreme 
views of the right of the church to punish heretics than Augustine, he 
treats the statements of his opponents with more courtesy and con- 
sideration, and more of judicial calmness than his passionate predecessor. 
He compels our respect both by the uniqueness of his insight and the 
intensity of his devotion to the purpose of working out a concrete unity 
in the universal church as including the universal state. The scholastic 
presupposition, too, on which he worked, that true reasoning cannot 
lead to conclusions contrary to the true faith, though not logically con- 
vertible into the statement that the faith which stands in opposition to 
our reasoning cannot be true, was nevertheless suggestive of such con- 
version and tended to lead toward reconstruction and restatement 
of belief. 



CHAPTER IV 

LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 

I. NEW WORLDS AND NEW PROBLEMS 

(i) The new world of physical science. — In the period intervening 
between St. Thomas and Leibniz, Scholasticism, Renaissance, and 
Reformation had revealed treasures of ancient culture and quickened 
the activities of the human spirit. But not only had there been a rebirth 
of letters, art, and religion. 1 Physical science too had been reborn, and 
now possessed a vigor unknown in its previous incarnation. It had a 
story to tell of a new heavens and a new earth. The crystalline spheres 
of ancient and mediaeval times had been ruthlessly shattered and the 
spirits which formerly controlled their movements were no longer 
visible to the mind's eye. The earth had been pushed out of its central 
position, and even weighed and found wanting with respect to its 
superiority among the planets. Nor was this the end of transition, for 
the whole solar system was now proclaimed to be but a small part of 
an' immeasurably great system of systems. 

But not only was our earth transformed in respect to its relation to 
other heavenly bodies. Geologists were claiming that it had a strange 
history. Once a molten mass it had attained its present form after 
violent convulsions and inundations occupying countless ages. Geogra- 
phers, too, had a new story to tell, for explorers had demonstrated the 
rotundity long claimed for it, and limits had been set to the limitless 
but all-limiting ocean of antiquity. 

In the light of this newly discovered temporal and spatial immensity 
of the universe man seemed strangely insignificant, a mere ephemeron 
in its vast expanse. As the physicist explained the world it seemed 
foreign to man's deepest interest. He had indeed found out many of 
its secrets, and could express many of its movements in marvelous 
mathematical formulae. Thus a new control over the material world 
had been gained, but in all this the categories of moral goodness and 
purpose seemed to have little recognition. Hence it was a problem for 
Leibniz to restore final causes to physics, not forgetting that it was a new 
physics with which he had to deal. 

(2) The new organic world. — The extension and transformation of the 
physical universe, due so largely to Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, 

1 Mollat, Leibniz' ungedruckte Schriften, p. 19. 

77 



78 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

found a parallel in the organic world through the works of Leuwenhoek, 
Swammerdam, and Malphigi. The discovery that a single drop of 
water might contain almost a million animalcules suggested that the 
inorganic world was in truth a world teeming with life. The organic 
world itself became much more minutely organic by the discovery of the 
embryonic plant within the seed, and of the spermatazoon within the 
animal. If the animal is but a transformation of a spermatazoon might 
it not be that the latter is in turn but the transformation of a smaller 
animalcule related to it as it is to the larger form, and might not this 
inclusion in and development of minute animal forms from others still 
more minute go on to the nth. degree ? Perhaps generation is but a 
stage in transformation of previously existing living forms, thus giving 
individual life as great an extension in the temporal sphere as organic 
life in general had gained in the spatial sphere through microscopic 
discoveries ? External difference of form seemed less a barrier to trans- 
formation after careful observation had revealed, as in the case of 
the silkworm and its moth, wonderful internal identity where external 
differences were most striking. 

But suppose that the scientific fairyland should turn out to be 
something other than a mere product of a very active imagination, what 
would it all mean? What would be the value of an unlimited multi- 
plication of animal forms if animals are mere automata as Descartes 
thought them? Just a vast extension of the sphere of mechanical 
necessity into a greatly enlarged sphere of seeming purpose — a sphere of 
seeming purpose now so massive as to throw a dark shadow of doubt 
over the human sphere, in which to many it is unendurable to regard 
purpose as other than real and freedom as but an illusion. Thus it 
became the task of Leibniz to show that animal life should not be 
regarded as mechanical, but that however far the sphere of life should be 
extended it was interpretable, and should be interpreted, in terms of 
consciousness, and its kinship to man admitted. 

It is very probable in spite of one or two passages to the contrary 
that the new discoveries in zoology not only gave Leibniz a new problem 
but also suggested important elements in the metaphysical theory which 
furnished a foundation for his answer to this and other problems. Cer- 
tainly long before the monadic theory appeared one of these discoveries 
suggested to him that materiality, in the form of ultimate physical 
elements, might be swallowed up in life. "It is even' to be feared that 
there are no ultimate elements, all being effectively divided to infinity 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 79 

into bodies organic." 1 Presumably his effort to interpret the universe 
in terms of life, not mere mechanism, was from the first the outgrowth 
of a desire to save individuality, purpose, and freedom, though the 
problem of freedom did not as he says become of absorbing importance 
to him until about his fortieth year. 

Not less strongly than he wished to escape from a mechanical 
explanation of scientific facts did Leibniz wish to make known those 
scientific facts and to open a way for scientific research. With prophetic 
vision he foresaw in the science which was yet to come a most powerful 
agency in advancing human welfare. He did not regard science as only 
a means of material advancement, important as this might be. He 
assigned to it a distinctly moral and religious function in that it revealed 
the perfection of God and thus made it easier for men to love and serve 
him. From this standpoint great scientists seemed to him to con- 
stitute a holy priesthood. Leibniz however well knew that in several 
countries of Europe, as Spain, Italy, and the hereditary lands of the 
empire, a rival priesthood and the narrowness of rulers repressed the 
knowledge of great scientific truths such as the Copernican theory. 3 
In other countries the rulers were often too much occupied with selfish 
interests, and wars offensive and defensive, to give a generous support 
to scientific pursuits, hence it was a problem for Leibniz to find some 
means of removing hindrances to the advancement of science, and of 
positively enlisting the monarchs of Europe as generous supporters of 
scientific research. 3 

(3) The new world of human life. — The genius of Leibniz was 
monadic in the sense that it reflected universal interests. His heart went 
out to the "innumerable and strange peoples brought to us for culture." 
He knew well how many of his fellow Europeans did not hesitate to 
contribute positively to the moral and physical destruction of these new- 
world citizens, and that more were uninterested in their welfare. There 
was evident need of a change in attitude in this respect especially among 
those European powers which had been striving for more than a hundred 
years for new-world trade and territory. 4 

Partly in connection with the struggle for new-world power, and 
partly independent of it, great changes had been wrought in Europe in 
religious, in political, and in economic life. The temporal supremacy 

1 Gerhardt, Leibniz 1 Werke, I, 335. 

2 Gerhardt, V, 497> Stein, Leibniz und Spinoza, 337. 

3 Stein, 334. 4 ibid., 313, 335; Gerhardt, V, 90. 



80 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

of the pope, never so seemingly secure as in the last years of Aquinas, 
had broken down, and in England and northwest Europe there had been 
open revolt against his spiritual authority as well. The Thirty Years' 
War closed two years after Leibniz' birth but its unsurpassed evils were 
still in evidence in the demoralization of vast numbers of the German 
people, in the devastation and depopulation of German territory, and 
in the general retardation of civilization. Leibniz said of it, "In France 
in the past century and in our own Germany in the present, neither 
famine, nor pestilence, nor any other public scourge has proved so 
injurious as has religious dissent." 1 Elsewhere, he expressed a fear that 
the terrible lesson might be forgotten, and that religious strife might 
again result in far-reaching destruction. After Louis XIV had shown 
his religious intolerance by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and 
also his greed for territory by actual attempts to enlarge his borders 
at the expense of both his Netherlandic and his German neighbors, 
Leibniz was not without dread that there might be a total suppression 
of religious liberty in Europe and a partial return to barbarism and 
superstition. Within Protestantism itself there was also a most deplorable 
strife. Attention often centered on the discussion of doctrinal points 
of little practical significance to the neglect of weightier matters of social 
duty. Leibniz thoroughly believed that a sound moral order must be 
based on religion hence to him this disturbance in religious life presented 
an important problem. "There is nothing," he says, "which appears to 
me so excellent as the religion of Jesus Christ, and nothing excepting 
the purity of that religion so important as the unity of the church of 
God." 2 

It was with respect to the purity of religion and unity of the church 
as a necessary basis for the preservation and development of moral order 
that Leibniz took upon himself the task of working out a solution of a 
religious problem which involved as its most prominent phases, (a) the 
reduction of partisan feeling so as to avoid violent outbreaks; (b) the 
repudiation or restatement of certain religious beliefs, some of official 
others of semi-official character, which hindered the progress of science 
and of morality; (c) the establishing of a really generous toleration in 
religious faith, and of co-operation in efforts to improve social and 
political life. To what extent such improvement was needed we shall 
now examine. 

In the political sphere the unity deemed essential in the Middle Ages 

1 Foucher, Leibniz, II, 549. 

2 Guhrauer, Leibniz' Deutsche Schrijten, I, 153-255. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 8 1 

was lost. The optimistic hoped for its restoration but not in the earlier 
form. Though feudalism had fallen as a political power many of its 
economic and social elements remained. Feudal warfare had passed 
away but its place had been taken by a warfare fiercer and more pro- 
longed in many cases, because the commercial and religious interests 
involved appealed more powerfully to the people. The religious inter- 
ests were in Leibniz' day giving way before dynastic and commercial 
interests but there was yet danger of religious warfare. In general the 
rising national states of Europe were poor in their conception of mutual 
obligation or duty. Preservation of the balance of power, an idea 
becoming prominent in this period, was practically as unsocial as the 
underlying motive in the formation of Hobbes's political state. As usual, 
external warfare hindered development of internal resources and also 
a fitting expression of the rights and duties of the various classes in the 
form of equitable laws, notwithstanding the fact that Hobbes, Grotius, 
Pufendorf, Spinoza, and Locke had examined the bases of right and 
government within a century. 

The restored German Empire which had never been able to secure 
much more than a formal unity was, as Leibniz said, held together by a 
mere silken thread. Much of the bitterness of recent religious strife 
remained, but German unity had an older and more direful foe in 
particularism, manifested in love of local independence and dread of a 
strong central government. This though often salutary to German 
development in the past now left her exposed and helpless before the 
often threatening danger of attack from the Turks and from France — a 
source of almost constant dread during the life of Leibniz. In a paper 
prepared in 1670 Leibniz described this most grievous situation declaring 
the empire to be without the three requisites of a persona civilis, a per- 
manent council, a standing army, and a permanent treasury. 1 Even 
his optimistic temper could see little future outlook under the existing 
conditions of mutual distrust between electors and princes, and their 
common distrust of the house of Austria. As a German elector said a 
few years later, "Germany is under the lion's paw and dare not stir." 2 
Her simulation of death, however, proved but imperfectly protective 
against the hunger of Louis XIV for new territory. Leibniz lived to see 
some promise of better things for German unity, but on the whole the 
various states remained far from the realization of the unity which he 
declared Germany must attain before it could cease to be the easy prey 
of ambitious powers and the battle ground of Europe. 3 

1 Ibid. 2 Eng. Hist. Review, July, 1909. J See note 2, p. 80. 



82 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

France, one of the two leading contestants for new-world power, at 
this time sought also to dominate in European affairs through intrigue 
and war. Its economic resources had been unusually well developed, 
and in the early part of the reign of Louis XIV he delighted to honor 
literature and natural science. Naturally he discouraged investigation 
of the bases of government as unwarrantable interference with his own 
private affairs. The glitter of his court dazzled Europe and exercised a 
hypnotic effect on the feudal nobility restraining them from efforts to 
regain any political power. The moral corruption of this luxurious and 
idle court poisoned the nation. The religious intolerance of the king, 
his selfish conception of the kingly office, and the moral degradation of 
the high classes called for a political and moral awakening. 

England was in this period the powerful rival of France for new- 
world power and the hope of distracted Europe for defense against 
French aggression. In this period English parliamentary supremacy 
was won, and though religious liberty was left under restrictions it was 
primarily for political reasons. The work of such men as Hobbes, 
Locke, and Newton commanded the intellectual respect of Europe. 
Yet it was an age in which there was much political and moral corruption, 
and at times French gold and French influence endangered the existence 
of English political institutions. 

A glimpse at the smaller states of Europe is necessary, for Leibniz 
dealt with universal relations. Holland was at this time prominent for 
her commerce, her intellectual advancement, and most of all as the 
plucky antagonist of French extension of power. Sweden illustrated 
successful resistance to an attempt to divide her territory made by her 
neighbors, but on the whole her strength was declining, and she soon 
began to lose her Baltic possessions. Russia made a spasmodic attempt to 
advance under Peter the Great, a monarch whose general moral culture 
was too low to permit successful application of his accepted ideal which 
was that of benevolent despotism. Russian territory was increasing. 
Italy was at this stage comparatively peaceful but without unity. Spain 
had ceased to be first among world powers and was declining rapidly, 
due largely to the suppression of free thought. Poland came forward 
once as the rescuer of Europe against the Turk but though capable of 
uniting temporarily under tremendous external pressure it had little 
internal unity. 

(4) Summary of problems. — The political situation of which Leibniz 
was well aware was indeed suggestive of many serious problems. It is 
strange how amidst the general strife and confusion Leibniz could hear 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 83 

the strains of universal harmony and talk of a best possible world. How 
could he hope for German unity knowing as he did the existing chaos ? 
How could he hope for a universal state and world-citizenship in the 
midst of international strife then so prevalent? Yet he did so hope, 
and the reason for this hope is expressed in the solution which he gave 
to existing problems. 

In brief it was Leibniz' problem to remove abnormal elements in the 
moral order arising in three ways: (a) Through a mechanical interpre- 
tation of the universe which rendered basal moral categories meaningless. 
(b) Through religious strife and narrowness, and also misdirected zeal 
introducing many moral evils and devitalizing normal moral and religious 
activities, (c) Through political strife and neglect of many of the 
functions of government, springing from commercial and dynastic 
interests and expressive of boundless egoism. His solution is found in 
connection with the conception of a kingdom of ends termed indiffer- 
ently either the kingdom of grace, or the divine city of spirits, or the 
moral realm in the natural world, or the city of God. 

II. ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 

■ (1) How the world came into being. — Our first inquiry is how the 
kingdom of grace took its rise, what is its relation to the kingdom of 
nature, and what the final purpose of both. 

The founder of the kingdom of grace is its monarch, the one original 
perfect necessary being, God. In his understanding from eternity there 
were an infinite number of ideas or essences, endowed with a sort of 
motor force and tending to pass into actual existence. We may call 
them possible existences because being without inner contradiction they 
could pass the first guard at the portals of reality, the law of contra- 
diction. But yet another guard must be passed whose demands were 
more difficult to satisfy. This was the law of sufficient reason, which 
permitted no individual idea to become real unless it manifested a highly 
social capacity, consisting in ability to enter into the best possible world 
as an active though perhaps indirect contributor to its perfection. As 
all who could pass the test came into the realm of actual existence the 
result was a world of perfect teleological continuity. From this stand- 
point there are no gaps in the series of beings in the universe. Seeming 
gaps there may be left for esthetic effect, as it were "musical cadences 
among phenomena." Besides we may think there are gaps because 
we do not see all beings in the universe, or do not know just what 
beings should exist in the best possible world. In all the vast 



84 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

universe the demands of infinite variety are met as no two beings are 
exactly alike. 

The individual ideas when they have become actual existences are 
termed monads. A monad is essentially perceptive. Not only is it in 
the universe, the universe is in it, as an ever-developing mental content. 
This unfolding is the development of the monad's own soul life, and at 
the same time necessary to the perfection of the whole. Here Leibniz 
takes an attitude of direct opposition to the mechanical view. The 
universe is not to be interpreted in terms of the mechanical, but even the 
material world must be interpreted in terms of conscious life. 

The individual monad as forming part of a universal system seems 
to be in a relation of interaction to all other members of the system, but 
this must not be interpreted in terms of transeunt action. Interaction 
should be interpreted as immanent action of individuals each exquisitely 
adapted to all of the others through a pre-established harmony originating 
in God and in a sense maintained by him, but never to the destruction 
of the individual or the negation of his activity, for this would mar the 
perfection of the whole of which he forms a part. Leibniz here puts in 
the place of the Spinozistic immanent action of the one substance, im- 
manent action of the many, by which individuality is saved. This too 
is a rejection of the Occasionalist view which although it recognized the 
individual seemed to deprive him of any real function. 

(2) The two kingdoms. — The principle of differentiation of monads is 
found in the degree of perfection with which they reflect the universe. 
Like St. Thomas' angels there are, strictly speaking, no two in one species, 
but it is convenient to divide them roughly into three great groups, the 
lowest of which is that of bare monads endowed with unconscious 
perception, and having an infinitely confused image of the universe. 
Next higher is that of souls with conscious perception and a low form of 
memory. Highest is that of spirits possessing apperception and reason, 
with consciousness of self and of other selves. This highest class forms 
the kingdom of grace or city of God. Reflection, beholding as in a 
mirror, transformation through vision, these processes we are familiar 
with as pertaining to the city of God; but Leibniz brings the concept 
down to the lowest monads, and makes this reflection of the universe 
an ever on-going process through which the monad attains perfection 
in both the lower world or kingdom of nature and in the higher or 
kingdom of grace. 

All three classes have appetition, which is not a mere will to exist but 
a perpetual will to become. In the lowest class this is unconscious 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINDGOM OF GRACE 85 

impulse or tendency, in the next higher instinct guided by feeling, and 
in the highest of all it is desire and volition. 

(3) Why the world came into being. — The purpose of the world is 
the traditional one — to express God's goodness or glory. As God's 
glory could not exist without spirits to recognize it, and as these spirits 
cannot increase in knowledge of the divine perfection except as their own 
perfection increases, the increase of God's glory is bound up with the 
full development or self-realization of spirits. 1 Hence we may say that 
all rational beings or spirits, since they are specially capable of reflecting 
the divine glory and imitating the divine will, are recognized members 
of the kingdom of grace, the chief glory of whose monarch is the welfare 
of his subjects. Lower forms of monad life, which constitute the 
kingdom of nature, have some claims on the universe but these need not 
conflict with the welfare of the realm of spirits. In fact the world might 
be destroyed and renewed by natural means if the welfare of spirits 
demanded it. In one sense the realm of grace is bound to contribute to 
the perfection of that of nature, since it is largely through the develop- 
ment of material resources that the advancement of the human race 
must come. 

, (4) The relation of the human spirit to its body. — The very intimate 
interrelation of the kingdom of nature and of grace is strikingly illus- 
trated in the relation of the human soul to its body. The soul is the 
dominant monad in the midst of a vast number of lower monads in 
harmonious relation. Every phase of their activity is in some sense 
reflected in the soul but it must never be regarded as merely the resultant 
of such activity. The soul reflects with considerable clearness and 
distinctness a higher world which the monads of the body reflect only in 
a vague, confused way. In this sense spirits may be called children of 
the divine household, capable of appreciating and imitating the divine 
order. This preservation of the individuality of the spirit is a leading 
motive throughout all of Leibniz' theory. Similarly he sought to 
maintain the transcendence of God in or over the monadic system. To 
obscure these two lines of demarcation would leave but Spinozistic 
pantheism, endangering both individuality and moral responsibility. 
The relation of God to the world however is not quite identical with 
that of soul and body. 

While Leibniz wishes to preserve the separate individuality of the 
human spirit he is also eager to show its necessary relation to the body. 
" Created spirits are never without organs and never without sensations 

1 Gerhardt, VI, 605, 621-22; VII, 544. 



86 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

as they cannot reason without symbols." 1 "There is never an abstract 
thought unaccompanied by material marks or traces." 2 But the spirit 
may preserve its identity and continuity while the body is undergoing 
cataclysmic disturbances, not however without serious disturbances of 
mental activities. 

It is worthy of note that in the early treatise in which Leibniz most 
emphatically declares the concrete unity of soul and body he also places 
the greatest possible emphasis on the difference between the material 
and spiritual. "Every I and thou is a single, inseparable, indestructible 
thing, and does not consist of three parts, soul, spirit, and body." 
"Bodies are merely the work of God. Spirits are intrinsically the king- 
dom of God." "Corporeal things are only shadows — the real truth is 
only in spirit, yet inexperienced men consider the spiritual as a dream, 
and that which can be grasped by sense as truth." 3 

Leibniz like Augustine, but from a different motive, had difficulty in 
accounting for the origin of the new citizens of the kingdom of spirits. 
Leibniz' world view demanded that every individual coming into actual 
existence should be chosen from the beginning from among possible 
existences. The difficulty lay in showing on one hand, where, if the 
human spirit was then endowed with actuality, it had spent the inter- 
vening ages before appearing in a human body, and on the other, how, 
if not at that time endowed with actual existence, it could become so 
endowed without miraculous interference. The difficulty was increased 
by Leibniz' biological views in which he drew a too general conclusion 
from Leuwenhoek's discoveries and to which he in the main persistently 
adhered. This view, that generation is but transformation from a lower 
form of life, e.g., man from spermatazoon, and the latter in turn from a 
lower form, and so on indefinitely, afforded sufficient individual continuity 
for Leibniz but of a very barren type. How could an individual spirit 
ever have really expressed its true individuality in such low forms of life 
for the countless centuries before its admission to the kingdom of grace 
by birth in human form ? Besides the relatively sudden awakening of 
spiritual activities so long dormant was not far short of the miraculous. 
The opposing view, that by transcreation a merely sensitive nature 
was suddenly endowed with a miraculous degree of perfection by the 
action of God, attracted Leibniz somewhat, but on the whole he seemed 
to prefer the former view, probably because it afforded some sort of 
individual continuity however worthless. 4 Spirits in such a state could 

1 Gerhardt, V, 197. 2 Ibid., VI, 533. s Guhrauer, I, 410-12. 

4 Gerhardt, II, 75, 99, 371; VI, 152, 352, 621. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 87 

scarcely be called members of "the moral world within the natural 
world," though predestined to become such. 

(5) Teleological continuity and man's place in the universe. — Leibniz 
thought that man's exalted place above other animals on our globe was 
in harmony with teleological continuity, as it gives man a freer sphere 
for action; so also rational animals higher than man, though no doubt 
existing in great numbers elsewhere, are kept from our earth. That 
creatures midway between man and beast exist on other globes may be 
true. That on our earth in a period when animal natures were more 
plastic, animals now varying widely may have descended from an 
earlier common form may also be true. 1 

Even the most wicked man has something to contribute to the good 
of the universe, and because of this he was permitted to come into it. 
The wickedness of Sextus Tarquinius provoked the Roman people to 
found a free state. 2 He acted under no other compulsion except that of 
his own nature and this cannot be legitimately termed compulsion. As 
for the idea of Sextus pre-existing in the divine understanding this throws 
no blame back upon God, since he, as Leibniz naively remarks, did not 
create his own understanding. The latter simply expresses the true 
nature of things. Thus evil is made by Leibniz a necessary moment in 
the universal good, a stimulus to ever advancing perfection. 

Leibniz admits original sin at least formally. His extreme individual- 
ism of course makes actual transference of either tendency or guilt 
impossible, except in the sense that one monad reflects others, and 
changes itself in reflecting. The true original sin for Leibniz lay in the 
necessary limitation or defect of created beings, and at times both 
Aquinas and Augustine had placed it there, emphasizing the unstable 
equilibrium of man's nature rather than the one act of Adam. 3 That the 
universe demands that unbaptized children should suffer eternal penalties 
Leibniz regarded as a cruel slander on the justice of God. 4 Original sin 
could not exclude from the beatific vision; for this there must be actual 
wrongdoing. With Leibniz as with Augustine and Aquinas the beatific 
vision is the final goal of man. We shall see later that the character of 
this all transforming vision has undergone transformation. We have 
already had an intimation that it is meant for the many not the few, 
in the thought that the glory of its object is increased by reflection. Are 

'Ibid., Ill, 565, 571, 579, 581; V, 455, 296. 
'Ibid., VI, 359-65. 

3 Ibid., VI, 181, 203, 451. 

'•Ibid., VI, 153-54, 220; Mollat, p. 42. 



88 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

the many so constituted that they can share it? This will depend on 
the nature of the many as well as upon the character of the vision. 

III. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 

(i) General relation of intellect, feeling, and will. — Are man's elemen- 
tary mental processes such that he may be expected to adopt the laws 
of the moral realm within the natural world rather than the laws of the 
lower natural world, or at least is he free to do so, is the problem which 
we shall study here. 

Leibniz treats the perceptive and conative faculties as merely two 
phases of one process, or as two activities of one substance. "Some 
attempt to act or some volition follows every thought immediately." 1 
He does not clearly distinguish pleasure and pain from these activities. 
They usually seem to belong with appetition, and like perception and 
appetition they may sink below the level of consciousness without 
ceasing to be effective. Leibniz prefers however not to use the terms 
pleasure and pain except for a distinctly conscious psychosis. 

As perception, appetition, and feeling are thus parts of a single 
ever on-going process there can be no such thing as volition uninfluenced 
by the whole mental content. Though a free will in this sense is chi- 
merical, in another sense the will, as every other activity of the monad, 
is free because it is spontaneous and utterly uninfluenced from without. 
The term free however applies rather to those activities which are 
uniquely human compared with those of lower forms of life, that is to 
such activities as follow a deliberative process and have been adopted 
by the self. 

(2) How moral freedom is possible. — The success of a kingdom of ends 
might seem to be assured when we learn that its laws are but developed 
forms of what man knows intuitively and is inclined to obey. Its 
possible failure lies in the fact that there is a serious hindrance to this 
development, and intuitions of right and wrong remain vague instead of 
becoming clear and demonstrative. The inclination to follow the moral 
law is counteracted by inclination toward the satisfaction of physical 
desires, and the intuitions of duty though they can never be wholly 
destroyed are obscured by confused sense perception. Granting this 
dualism or conflict in man's nature the next question is whether it can 
be overcome. 2 

Leibniz in spite of both his predeterminism and his determinism gives 
specific directions for overcoming the dualism mentioned above, and 

1 Mollat, p. 4. 3 Gerhardt, V, 80-91. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OP GRACE 89 

shows why most men do not do so. He takes it for granted that to see 
and to approve better things and yet to follow worse things is quite 
general. This is because men oppose to the prospective evil deed with 
its promise of immediate pleasure, and lively sense imagery, only abstract 
ideas, or pensees sourdes, that is thought practically unaccompanied by 
imagery and feeling, hence weak in motor force. Men most frequently 
think of God, virtue, and felicity, without developing or analyzing these 
ideas, hence though they may come into consciousness in time of tempta- 
tion they have no motor force to restrain passion. As the bad always 
includes some good and may be seen under the form of good, men are 
hurried into action before they develop the idea of the proposed act 
sufficiently to see the evil involved or the good involved in its opposite, 
although the opposite is vaguely present. 

There is one method that we should know cannot avail. The interests 
of the moral realm cannot be saved by any coup d'etat; they may be 
saved by diplomacy. In periods when our besetting sin lies dormant 
we may marshal its natural enemies, by developing counteracting 
desires or interests which already make some appeal to us. Agriculture, 
gardening, scientific research, art, good books, and associates, or some 
indispensable occupation may be used to occupy our attention and to 
satisfy our joy hunger, thus often preventing the dormant passion from 
rising above the threshhold of consciousness. Sometimes a gradual 
reduction of indulgence in a vicious habit may lead to perfect self- 
control. It is important also to strengthen the imagination in picturing 
the natural but perhaps distant penalty of a besetting sin. Periods of 
meditation and examination of motive and purpose are valuable. In 
moments of insight we may formulate rules of action leading in an 
opposite direction, and may hold ourselves steadily to their observance 
thus acquiring the habit of acting in accordance with reason. In short 
by directing our attention to wholesome pursuits we may develop hidden 
resources within our own nature, and actually change our tastes with 
reference to pleasure. 1 

The above is evidently moral salvation through a process of self- 
education or self-discipline for which our capacity is assumed. In 
accordance with this theory tragic situations like that so thrillingly 
described by Mr. James as the fifth type of decision would be sure to 
end in moral defeat, but the prudent man may foresee such evils and 
flee. Extensive learning is not needed for this kind of moral self- 
protection. The good will, that is the habit of formulating or developing 

I Ibid., V, 155-97; VI, 288-89. 



90 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

moral intuitions into maxims or rules of conduct and patiently adhering 
to their observance until obedience becomes easy, is much more impor- 
tant. Leibniz' doctrine of freedom, stated briefly, is that we may win 
self-control if we proceed in accordance with the laws of our own nature 
by directing attention so far as possible toward a good to be attained, 
this good consisting in the full development of some of our inherent 
capacities. In striking contrast with the earlier views which we have 
studied, especially Augustine's, is the emphasis placed upon the develop- 
ment of good impulses rather than upon the suppression of evil impulses. 
The original good rather than the original sin is the center of attention. 
The process of moral education presented here is mainly individual. A 
more social form we shall study later. 

It will naturally be asked whether the practical freedom of the will 
described above is a real freedom to attain highest ends, and if so how 
this can be reconciled with the pre-established harmony which reigns 
even in the kingdom of grace. Leibniz himself was sure he had solved 
the problem of predestination and saved the day both for human liberty, 
and for the goodness and justice of God. The will is never necessitated 
but inclined. This is true even of divine choices though they always 
actually do follow the dictates of reason. All ardent advocates of 
predestination have at some time admitted that it must always be in 
conformity with God's goodness and justice, hence it must always be 
interpreted so as to exclude anything which would conflict with perfect 
goodness and justice. The individual Christian may be sure he cannot 
fall away except through his own fault. 

With Leibniz the sphere of grace is necessarily as broad as the 
kingdom of grace. To every member of the divine city of spirits enough 
grace is given to make his moral advance possible but not to necessitate 
it, for neither corruption nor grace is ever quite irresistible. This 
grace is perhaps given to some in the hour of death, at least it must be 
given so that none can complain of neglect. "The greatest gift of 
divine grace consists in mental illumination and inclination of will, by 
both of which the attention of the mind towards its duties is perfected." 1 

(3) Pleasure and pain, and their moral values. — Leibniz sometimes 
defines pleasure as a sense or perception of perfection, sometimes as a 
sense of increasing perfection, and often, to make the emphasis greater, 
as nothing other than a sense of perfection. 2 As perfection is increase 
of power, or heightening of being, or passage from less to greater 

'Gerhardt, II, 569. 2 Mollat, pp. 7, 17, 61. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OE GRACE 9 1 

perfection the definitions given above are identical. 1 Once he hesitates 
to give a formal definition, because pleasure like light and color must be 
felt to be understood. 2 Happiness is a state of lasting pleasure, not 
necessarily always felt, but if we turn the mind's eye inward the per- 
ception of harmony there will arouse it. 3 Perception of perfection in 
others should give us joy, as well as when in ourselves, and normally 
it does so. 

Pain is the perception or sense of an imperfection. It has a highly 
important function since it is the goad which stimulates man to move 
from less to greater perfection. This is emphatically true of it in its 
imperceptible form of restlessness or discontent with the present 
moment. 4 Since some disquietude is essential to felicity, a perfect 
possession of which would produce insensibility, even the angels must 
advance through overcoming disquietude. 5 Leibniz as has been said 
objects to calling this disquietude pain, but as it often passes into 
conscious pain, and really is an incipient form of pain, he himself does 
not adhere to the limitation, using the phrase demies douleurs to express 
it. Besides he leaves pain which is distinctly felt with a similar function. 

Consciousness itself is a result of various conflicts and combinations 
in the underworld of petites perceptions, demies douleurs, et demies 
plaisirs, at least such is the implication in the statement that it would 
cease without these elementary processes. 6 A similar process goes on 
through the developing stages of consciousness up to deliberation and 
choice. Here we find in the microcosm as in the macrocosm that 
" compossibility " is the password, for the candidate among the con- 
testing motives is chosen not because stronger than any other single 
contestant, but because of its ability to combine with others and with 
them drive from the field single contestants or weaker combinations. 
This continual disquietude and conflict in the soul of man has its parallel 
in his physical organism where a constant process of disturbance and 
readjustment goes on. Pain is evidently essential to the dynamism 
of progress. 

Not only is pain in its higher or lower forms, preferably in the lower, 
necessary to the on-going activity in a developing consciousness, but it 
has also in its perceptible form an important function in heightening the 
appreciation of its opposite. But just as only a small amount of pain 
is needed to prevent mental inertia and to start new movements of 

1 Guhrauer, II, 36^ 4 Ibid., V, 152. 

2 Gerhardt, V, 180; Guhrauer, I, 420. s Ibid., V, 174-79. 

3 Gerhardt, VII, 43. 6 Ibid., V, 150-51, 175. 



92 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

progress so here but little is required to bring out the contrast effect in 
pleasure. The quantity must always be less than that of pleasure. 
Again we find an analogy between macrocosm and microcosm. As 
in the universe evil is taken up as a necessary moment in the ever 
increasing perfection so in the individual pain or displeasure is taken up 
as a necessary moment in the increase of pleasure. 

The treatment of pleasure is highly important in Leibniz because of 
his early conception of it as the sole motive power in conscious appetition 
or volition. If it were not for his equivocal use of the term pleasure it 
would be necessary to class him as a psychological hedonist. In any 
case he places tremendous emphasis on the feeling side of the volitional 
psychosis, and does not hesitate to attack non-hedonistic views fiercely. 
"The proud boastings of Sadducees and Stoics of virtue sought for its 
own sake are far from true to human nature." 1 "Interrogate those lofty 
cloud dwelling Stoics, pretended enemies of pleasure, real enemies of 
truth. Look about, examine their actions or their motives! You will 
see that you cannot point your finger without impinging upon the 
falsity of their vain philosophy! Rectitude is nothing except pleasure 
of the mind." 2 However, examination of other passages shows that 
under the category of pleasure Leibniz includes every feeling of appre- 
ciation of an act as praiseworthy or in accordance with the dignity of 
man, all sense of satisfaction in duty done, and even that calmness of 
mind regarded by the Stoic as essential to virtuous conduct just because 
of its freedom from emotional quality. 3 

Leibniz undertook a difficult task, that of reducing the antagonism 
between the praiseworthy and the useful, as Socrates had wished might 
be done. 4 The problem became more complicated by the division of 
goods into still another class, the agreeable or pleasant. His aim was 
to state all of these in terms of a single feeling, either as constituting 
the feeling itself or as valued because of their causal relation to it. The 
useful then becomes that which produces pleasure in an indirect way. 
It serves to arouse the feeling of pleasure in us, but the producing object 
perishes in the using in most cases. The praiseworthy reduces directly 
to the agreeable or pleasant. It is good in itself, never mere means. 
Its perception gives us pleasure of a very high kind, that is to say pleasure 
of the spirit. The mental object or thing perceived does not perish in 
the using, but it does have a causal efficiency. It may serve as an ideal 
in the light of which we are transformed. Our joy in contemplating this 

1 Gerhardt, I, 160. 3 Ibid., p. 36. 

2 Mollat, pp. 28-29. 1 1bid., p. 36; Guhrauer, II, 46. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 93 

ideal stimulates us to express it in our own lives. Because we recognize 
it as a good in itself it has power to uplift us. Leibniz might have added 
that the praiseworthy is distinctly social in character and involves inter- 
ests far wider than does the useful, employing the latter term as he does. 

The term perfection, used in defining pleasure, is employed lavishly, 
not always consistently. Some perfections are admittedly inferior to 
and in conflict with others since they drag imperfections in their train. 
A qualitative distinction within pleasure is recognized. That the highest 
type of perfection, the moral, does not always have as its accompaniment 
the sense of perfection is shown by the statement that many of the 
virtuous are less happy than the wicked. 1 Leibniz forsakes both psycho- 
logical and ethical hedonism by adding that it seems that God has so 
ordered it to give us an opportunity to exercise "free virtue springing 
from wisdom and a non-mercenary love toward himself." 2 It is certain 
that this article was written after 1700. Presumably later, in an undated 
paper it is said that neither hope of reward nor fear of penalty moves 
the righteous to their good deeds. Felicity, however, though not a 
motive of virtue is, in the form of the highest pleasure of the mind, its 
necessary concomitant. Elsewhere the inadequacy of the present life 
and the need of God and a future life is argued from the standpoint 
of the inequality of merit and happiness. 

Leibniz seems to have anticipated Shaftesbury in emphasizing taste 
for virtue and distaste for vice. In 171 2 he warmly commended 
Shaftesbury's "Characteristics" and seemed especially pleased with 
the natural basis for the virtues therein presented. 3 For Leibniz a 
taste for pure pleasure, developed under the guidance of the reason, is 
synonymous with perfection of the will. "That serenity of soul which 
finds the greatest pleasure in virtue and the greatest ill in vice, that is 
to say in the perfection or imperfection of the will is the greatest good 
of which man is capable here below, even if there were nothing to attain 
beyond this life." 4 But unfortunately for the success of the moral 
realm, men though capable of this high and holy joy rarely develop their 
taste sufficient to attain it, hence our problem of how they are to be 
brought into active and efficient citizenship in a kingdom of ends is yet 
unsolved. We shall find it occurring again later in a more distinctly 
social setting outside of which its solution is impossible. 

(4) Passion and confused thought. — Passion as with the earlier 
philosophers is the main hindrance to the development of the taste for 

1 Mollat, p. 49. 3 Gerhardt, III, 423-43. 

2 Ibid., pp. 51-52, 89. 4 Mollat, p. 61. 



94 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

pure joys so essential to virtue. It is defined as a strong tendency to 
some form of action, the stimulus to which may be either a thought or 
a feeling. It is accompanied by pleasure and displeasure and by great 
confusion of ideas. It is the deadly foe of clear and distinct thinking for 
it misrepresents to the mind the pleasure of the proposed action and 
unduly hastens the decision of reason. The value of passion when 
restrained by reason is admitted. The violent struggle in the passion 
of despair represents disturbance set up by blocking a powerful tendency. 
Leibniz does not generalize this so as to apply it to all passions but it 
shows how modern is his thought. When the passion-struggle subsides 
the passion may remain in a modified form, as where anger losing its 
violent manifestations becomes hate. The inner disturbance in passion 
is so clearly mirrored in outward movements that a careful observer 
need never fail to detect its presence. 1 

(5) The problem of disinterested love. — If the individual has just two 
powerful motives, his own pleasure and self-preservation, the conception 
of a kingdom of ends must necessarily be discarded. It implies intimate 
social relations in the most perfect of all societies, in which man must 
treat fyis fellow-man with respect and reverence. Because of these 
implications the very prevalent individualistic psychology of Leibniz' 
day which represented every man as necessarily regarding others as 
mere instruments for his own pleasure and self-preservation needed 
supplementation and correction. 

Leibniz often spoke of the problem of disinterested love as very 
difficult. Much as he admired Hobbes he severely disapproved of his 
representation of man as by nature selfish and unsocial. Such mis- 
anthropic views of human nature he deemed positively immoral in their 
influence. 2 But while from the standpoint of ethics and of political 
science he disapproved of this view his own early psychology of pleasure 
as the sole motive of the voluntary act seemed to point in the same 
direction. "We do everything for our own good and it is impossible for 
us to hold other opinions although we may talk about others." "There 
is no one who does anything voluntarily except for his own good." 3 
But finally Leibniz found a method of transforming this ultra-selfish self 
into a self with some social interests. He very often refers to his solution 
of the problem which was published in 1693 in the preface to a collection 
of national and international papers. He thought his solution was 
capable of serving as a source of great illumination to both theology 

'Mollat, p. 86; Gerhardt, V, 153-55; VII, 497. 

2 Ibid., Ill, 424; V, 253. s Ibid., II, 577-78; Mollat, p. 24. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 95 

and jurisprudence. 1 There is little evidence that it did so. He traces 
the genesis of his solution back to Augustine's division of objects into 
two classes, one of which serves as instruments for the satisfaction of 
our wants. The other consists of things in which we rest with satisfac- 
tion for their own sake. Love for objects in the class mentioned first, and 
usually called love of desire, he rejected as unworthy to be called love; 
then he formed his definition on the basis of the second. "To love or to 
esteem is to take pleasure in the happiness or perfection of another." 
If we can do this we have some motivation for doing good to others. 2 

But the question arises whether love is really disinterested if we hope 
to attain our own pleasure by giving others pleasure. Are we not using 
them as means? Leibniz is sure that "what pleases us here is a good 
in itself not a good of interest," that is that we neither hope for nor 
attain any other advantage for ourselves than pleasure in the happiness 
of another. "It pertains to the end and not the means." "When we 
desire things, because they please us in themselves and are consequently 
good in themselves without regard to consequences, they are ends not 
means." Other passages reaffirm this position. 3 

But how can we feel another's joy, or make his pleasure our own ? 
The nature of the monad provides the psychological mechanism, all 
monads being living mirrors. "Just as there can be double refraction 
in vision, i.e., in the lens of the eye, and in the lens of an optical tube, so 
is there a double reflection in thinking. As each mind has the likeness 
of a mirror one will be in our mind another in the mind of another. 
And if there are more mirrors, that is more minds that recognize our good 
the light will be greater, not only by the mirrors mingling light in the 
eye but also the splendor collected within them produces glory. "4 
Leibniz never means that mirroring is the whole process. By the 
vision of another's joy or perfection we receive an impulse in the same 
direction. His mirror imagery is not always easy to follow especially 
when we think of the monad as a living mirror developing wholly from 
within, but we can see that he is trying to picture the self as essentially 
social, and its happiness and development as most intimately related to 
that of other selves. It would just as naturally find satisfaction in 
preserving itself as a social self as a self conceived as individual finds 
pleasure in activities for self-preservation. 

1 Ibid., p. 28. 

2 Gerhardt, III, 384-87; V, 150; VII, 546; Guhrauer, II, 483. 

3 Gerhardt, I, 358; II, 569; V, 150; Mollat, pp. 28, 36, 37. 

4 Ibid., p. 29. 



g6 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

It may still be questioned whether we have yet found a sufficient 
basis for a kingdom of ends. Monads reflect clearly only within narrow 
limits. The distinguished classical advocate of disinterested love in 
friendship tells us in De amicitia that few have been famous for friendship. 
The disinterested devotion of parent to child, beautiful as it is, cannot 
serve as a working basis for a kingdom of ends as broad as humanity. 
Leibniz recognized the need of a wider social self and tried to provide 
for it in his treatment of the concept of justice. Notwithstanding the 
close psychological connection of disinterested love and justice as 
treated by Leibniz it will be profitable to get a glimpse of the natural 
societies through which the latter must find expression before dealing 
with it. 

IV. NATURAL SOCIETIES AND NATURAL RIGHT 

(1) The family, slavery, and the household. — A natural society is one 
that nature wishes, which she has implanted a desire for, and has given 
power to realize. There are six natural societies each having its own 
purpose. 1 

The basal natural society is wedlock and its purpose the maintenance 
of the race. The marriage relation, based on natural instinct, becomes 
one of mutual love and helpfulness. The second natural society is that 
of parent and children. Its purpose is the nourishment and education 
of the children. A free man of noble character trains and educates his 
children so as to make them his heirs in culture and virtue. The child 
owes obedience and gratitude when old enough to understand what has 
been done for it. The parents exist for the child as the present for 
the future. 2 

The third natural society is that of master and slave, based on the 
natural superiority of the master, for whose purpose the slave is but an 
instrument or little more than that. The Aristotelian justification of 
slavery from the analogy that as reason governs the senses and the soul 
the body, so the master because he is rational should rule the slave who 
possesses but physical strength, is not accepted as valid. If the slave is 
at all educable it would be the duty of his master to educate him for 
freedom. The relation of one as mere means to the good of another 
does not exist between man and man. But if there should be a right 
of slavery according to natural reason, there is a stronger right opposed 
to the abuse of this right. " It is the right of rational souls naturally 
and inalienably free; it is the right of God who is the sovereign master 

1 Guhrauer, I, 415-19. 2 Ibid.; Mollat, p. 69. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 97 

over bodies and souls and under whom the masters are fellow-citizens 
with their slaves." 1 One can say the body belongs to the soul and 
since the soul of the slave cannot be acquired neither can the body. 
The right of the master is at most but very limited. When contrary to 
the nature of things the right of slavery is admitted, strict right must 
be limited by equity and charity. The fourth natural society, the 
household, comprises the first three and its purpose is to provide for 
daily needs. 

(2) The structure and function of the state. — The fifth natural society 
is civil, a city if small, a province if made up of several cities, a kingdom 
if made up of different provinces. The general purpose is to secure 
happiness more quickly and to retain it more certainly. The state seeks 
temporal welfare. 

Leibniz rejects Hobbes's view of the origin of the state. It puts man 
below certain animal groups which band together for co-operation rather 
than to escape mutual conflict or fear of their kind. 2 Men of the highest 
character voluntarily form societies for mutual aid. In fact, it is only 
when to some extent men recognize virtue and good faith in others that 
they judge it wise to enter into a society with them to seek the common 
good. 3 Leibniz also recognized that neither fear nor desire for felicity 
had served among primitive peoples to produce a state of the contract 
type. 

A constitutional monarchy is the form of government to be preferred. 
Cabals and animosities may prevail in an assembly, and render its rule 
as arbitrary as that of a tyrant. Arbitrary rule defeats an important 
purpose of the state which is to make the empire of reason flourish. 
Like Aquinas Leibniz thought a combination of the principles of mon- 
archy, aristocracy, and democracy highly desirable where conditions 
would permit. 4 

Resistance to a tyrannical government is lawful. Hobbes was right 
only so far as that attack should not be made for trivial reasons. He 
was inconsistent in allowing that a prisoner deserving punishment may 
seek escape, while good citizens under similar danger to life and liberty 
may not seek to save themselves. Filmer's defense of an absolute 
government as paternal in its origin overlooks the fact that the relation 
of parent to child is not that of master to slave. 5 

Though a foe to absolutism Leibniz was no ardent advocate of a 

1 Guhrauer, I, 41 5^ Mollat, p. 68. 

3 Gerhardt, V, 253. * Gerhardt, III, 277. 

3 Mollat, p. 13. .s Mollat, p. 67. 



98 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

larger political liberty. He thought that the Europe of his day suffered 
more from "libertinism than from lack of liberty." Political salvation 
he thought depended on the few. The wise should rule even if they 
must use both force and skill to gain and maintain control. His ideal of 
government was that of a very generous type of paternalism with some 
constitutional limitations, certainly not the happiest form of government 
in a kingdom of ends. 1 

In contrast with Augustine and to some extent with Aquinas Leibniz 
ascribed a very wide field of activity to the government. The aim of 
government is the public welfare and the greatest possible amount of 
felicity. 2 In many respects things contributory to this are universally 
desired, but they can be obtained only when sought through the agency 
of wise rulers. That the ruler should take personal oversight in weighty 
matters is important. Under no condition should he intrust such 
matters to others. His power for doing good or evil is very great and 
so also is his responsibility. Some of the specific ends in a good state 
are to render the people temperate, content with the political order, 
prudent, well disposed toward each other, well informed in practical 
arts and skilled in every useful activity of body or mind, and religious in 
the sense of believing it shall be well with him who seeks the glory of 
God, which is identical with the public good, and ill with the wicked. 3 

As the circumstances about him seemed to demand, Leibniz empha- 
sized the importance of military strength, meaning however not so 
much a standing army as a loyal citizen soldiery ready to come quickly 
to the aid of the country. The evils of protracted military service he 
bitterly deplored. 4 

Leibniz' unique contribution to the idea of governmental functions 
was in the emphasis he placed on the encouragement of science. Sug- 
gestions of an agricultural department, experiment stations, and state- 
supported technical schools are found in his works. We have here in 
the broadest sense a new contemplative life. The sciences and arts by 
which our power over nature is increased were regarded as the greatest 
treasure of the human race. Rulers should provide for the preservation 
and development of such sciences. 5 

Leibniz placed great emphasis on the academy of science and devoted 
much attention to the establishment of such institutions. With him 
salvation was by enlightenment, but the enlightenment must pass into 

1 Gerhardt, III, 264-65. 

2 Mollat, pp. 1, 7, 85. 4 Stein, 315. 

* Ibid., pp. 4-5, 20, 86. s Mollat, pp. 4-5, 20. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 99 

action. No other rationalist has emphasized so strongly that thinking 
is for the sake of doing. "The goal is to unite theory and practice and 
to improve not only arts and sciences, but also country and people, 
agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and in short all the means of 
sustenance. ' '* That divorce of theory and practice had been very hurtful 
to the French, English, and Florentine academies, he fully believed. It 
was his thought that practical arts should be introduced from other 
countries. Specialists employed in connection with the academy were 
to write the textbooks for lower and higher schools. In fact only con- 
certed efforts under the direction of the state could make possible 
advance in the sciences hence political science became basal. 2 

With surprising frequency Leibniz refers to the use of the micro- 
scope which he thought promised to reveal worlds of more practical 
value than those revealed by the telescope. Not more than ten men 
he says are now devoting themselves seriously to investigation by means 
of it though a hundred thousand could be thus employed to advantage. 3 

The religious value of scientific knowledge was a favorite theme with 
Leibniz. "Better than many recently written defences of religion, a 
study of the marvels of nature would serve to convince the profane." 
"Without the sciences contemplatives become visionaries." Men 
cannot love God without they know his perfections and if they know 
them it is natural to love him. The sciences are a powerful instrument 
to promote the glory of God. It was one of Leibniz' most cherished 
hopes that the superiority of Christianity with respect to the sciences 
would prove an effective argument in propagating the faith. 4 

An interesting social phase of Leibniz' view of the academy of 
sciences was that it would interest the leisure class in the sciences and in 
the practical arts which connect closely with them. From this two 
valuable results would follow: (a) the moral betterment of the higher 
class by the substitution of pure and wholesome interests for empty 
and hurtful ones, and (b) the encouragement of handworkers. The 
breaking down of class divisions by means of developing common 
interests rather than by means of sudden political movements is char- 
acteristic of Leibniz. 5 

A very important duty of the state is the education of youth. We 
have already seen how Leibniz proposed to overcome evil tendencies and 
bad habits by a process of self -education ; but this is neither his surest 

1 Gerhardt, III, 262; Guhrauer, II, 268. 2 See note 5, p. 98. 

JMollat, pp. 52-53; Gerhardt, II, 234. 

4 Gerhardt, II, 536; III, 261-62, 279. s Guhrauer, II, 43. 



IOO A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

method nor his easiest. Children may be taught to feel such pleasure 
in virtue and pain in vice that they will infallibly choose the former and 
reject the latter, for there is more pleasure in virtue than in vice. Leibniz 
was sure if it were only the fashion to be virtuous everyone would 
realize this. He probably anticipated the difficulty of introducing the 
fashion but he did not despair. 1 

In common with most great men Leibniz thought the schools of his 
day very poor. No doubt they were so for the splendid provisions for 
public education made largely under the influence of Luther and 
Melancthon had been rendered ineffective by the Thirty Years' War. 
He approved the use of games for quickening the intellect and develop- 
ment of self-restraint. In several papers he speaks of the need of 
physical training (not however in connection with the schools) in order 
that the body may possess health, agility, and beauty which are invalu- 
able social assets. 2 

The study of logic Leibniz deemed very valuable, but thought that 
as it was usually presented in the schools it was practically worthless. 
As we should naturally expect, he wished to introduce the new studies 
demanded by the sense realists for the sake of their directly practical 
value and also probably for the sake of developing the imagination, lack 
of which very seriously affects the will. There are strong suggestions 
that his school curriculum would have been far above the capacities of 
the average child. In one very suggestive passage he expressed the 
wish that the principles of certain professions and arts and even of the 
trades might be practically taught among the philosophers or some 
group of scholars, who in turn might become the teachers of the race. 
Philosophy with Leibniz was not without function in practical life. 3 

As might be expected Leibniz urged that in all religious instruction 
the emphasis should be placed on those doctrines which were most 
fruitful in the moral life. Failure to do this was one of the basal evils 
which he attempted to remove. 4 

(3) "Jus naturale" and its three principles. — It was the purpose of 
Leibniz to remove the harshness and externality from law by a psy- 
chological treatment of its leading concepts. In fact he felt that Roman 
law notwithstanding its great suggestiveness was by no means perfectly 
adapted to the needs of more modern peoples. It was an ideal of 

1 Gerhardt, V, 177; VII, 489. 

1 Mollat, p. 3; Guhrauer, I, 479, 491; II, 473. 

s Gerhardt, V, 509; VII, 494; Guhrauer, I, 374, 393. 

4 Gerhardt, III, 138; VII, 121. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE IOI 

Leibniz, never but in a small measure realized, to give the leading 
Christian conceptions expression in law. The previous century had 
produced many great theorists on the nature of law and the basis and 
functions of government but there was yet much to be done and a part 
of it was to undo what had recently been done. As much of Leibniz' 
work on this subject was not published until very recently its influence 
was not great. As the members of the Kingdom of Grace are members 
of natural societies they must be under natural right or law, but as we 
shall see there are different degrees of natural law. Natural right has 
its origin in the divine understanding hence it is unvarying and may be 
called perpetual right. Its purpose is the maintenance and furtherance 
of the natural societies and it is concerned with both outer and inner 
acts, as jus externum etjus internum. Its supreme principle is " All must 
be directed to the greatest general good" or Solus publico, supremo lex est. 
In all states we find certain perpetual principles derived from it, such as 
the prescriptions that God must be worshiped and magistrates and 
parents honored. All human laws should conform to natural right, but 
because of human weakness and the inefficiency of legislators they often 
fail to do so. There may be valid and useful laws which do not reflect 
its' unvarying character and which because of different conditions which 
they are meant to provide for are very dissimilar in different countries, 
and even at different times in the same country. No law, however, 
should contradict it. The revealed law of God but strengthens and 
confirms its principles. 1 This sounds much like Aquinas but we shall 
see a difference later. 

Subordinate to the supreme principle of natural right are three 
general principles expressing three degrees of right. The first and 
lowest of these obtains even in the rudest state of nature. It may be 
called strict or narrow right, or right of property, or individual right 
(jus strictum, out jus proprietotis). Its rule is neminem loedere. Its 
purpose is to secure peace by removing the most flagrant cause of strife. 
The second kind of right presupposes an organized society or state. It 
is distinctly social and both modifies and supplements the first. It is 
called jus societotis out equitatis, out communitatis , and its rule is suum 
cuique tribuere. In rendering his own to each it judges from the stand- 
point of the greatest public good. The third kind of right is jus internum 
out pietatis. Its rule is honeste out pie vivere. It penetrates deeply into 
the inner motives j?f acts, and brings God into the society. This last 
principle though expressed in the words of Ulpian is used by Leibniz to 

1 Mollat, pp. i, 9, 14, 73-74, 85; Guhrauer, I, 414. 



102 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

convey a different meaning, and the second principle also receives a 
richer content as we shall see in the three varieties of justice. The 
division of right into three degrees each representing an evolution in 
society beyond the preceding one is significant. 1 Corresponding with 
the three degrees of natural right are the three degrees of justice. 

(4) The first two degrees of justice. — Leibniz wished to treat both 
ethics and theology from the standpoint of jurisprudence in order to give 
them more system and rationality, at the same time he wished to psy- 
chologize law by giving its leading concepts more internality. Hence 
he sought long and painfully for a conception of justice with a new and 
richer content. He carefully examined what should be included and 
what excluded. Prudence must be included as it is practical reason, 
and justice being a virtue must have the characteristic mark of all the 
virtues, that is, the aim to control passion and to secure the sway of 
reason. The lowest stage of justice is commutative. It respects the 
person and property of others and expects a similar respect from them, 
but this it might do largely from fear. Leibniz felt keenly that division 
of property as it existed in his day was mainly in accordance with such 
principles as we might expect to find in a rude state of nature. He was 
very sure that the truly social standpoint had not been reached, by 
which every individual could enrich the whole and in turn be made 
richer thereby. He recommends state aid to private industry as one 
very important means of advance, but his general thought seems to be 
that marked transformation of justice in respect to the possession of 
material goods cannot come without a corresponding development of 
man's whole social nature. Leibniz' man is never the abstract economic 
man, though the importance of economic interests is fully recognized, 
and the need of a more positively social type of justice with respect to 
them admitted. 

In attempting to give the concept of justice a richer and more 
positive content Leibniz shows that no strict line of demarcation can be 
drawn between injuring another and refusing to aid him. He asks us 
to consider a concrete case in which our own interest is deeply involved, 
for the demand which the individual makes upon others becomes the 
measure of his obligation to others. The universal is to be found 
reflected in the individual and our neighbors must be treated just as 
generously as we ourselves would wish to be treated. Justice is no half- 
way measure between love and hate. If we imagine ourselves in a 
situation where another might with but slight effort and with no personal 

1 Gerhardt, I, 161; III, 386; Mollat, pp. 5, 12-15, 64-65. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 103 

disadvantage save us from great calamity and he did not do so we 
should not think him just. Similarly if under like conditions he refused 
to aid us in coming into the possession of some great good. Justice 
demands an active interest in the welfare of others; it recognizes that 
"we are not born for ourselves but for the good of society." It has in 
it intellectual elements and also volitional, and affective. It involves 
equity, and charity in the narrower sense, hence the worth of Leibniz' 
oft repeated definition of justice as the charity of the wise begins to 
appear. 1 One way of knowing what this higher type of justice demands 
is to put ourselves at the standpoint of the other person concerned, but 
we must remember that in many cases the whole society is concerned, 
hence rewards and penalties must be awarded from the standpoint of 
the general welfare. We are now in. the sphere of jus publicum, not jus 
privatum, and the justice we exercise here should be distributive justice. 2 

We have come to the stage where we can see the mutual relations o* 
the welfare of the whole and of the individual, and that one "cannot 
easily be happy in the presence of the miserable." 3 Now we can endure 
some pain in seeking another's good, because the pleasure we obtain 
from that good overbalances our pain. Similarly, "Good men will 
willingly bear a moderate amount of evil to prevent the greater misery of 
many." 4 It should be noticed that in this stage prudence is conspicu- 
ously present balancing the gain of others with the individual's own loss. 
It is a mistake, however, to think that spiritual health must be sus- 
tained by goods wrested from others, as in a shipwreck where one must 
struggle for the exclusive possession of a board. It thrives on goods 
which may be shared, and "true felicity is increased rather by the 
multitude of associates." 5 

But this second type of justice needs supplementation. We are not 
all wise enough to practice that justice which is the charity of the wise 
man, hence we cannot perfectly realize the right of the community or 
practice what we do realize of it without a larger view. The distributive 
type of justice must yield before the justice of piety or of internal recti- 
tude by means of which justice is given a universal sphere; God becomes 
a part of the community and the community is widened to include his 
realm. 6 Here Leibniz blends the morality of love, the Christian ideal, 
with the morality of universal reason, the law of the Stoic sage. Before 

x Ibid., pp. 23-29, 35, 48, 56-58; Gerhardt, VII, 106-7. 
2 Mollat, pp. 57-59. " Ibid., p. 86. 

3 Ibid., p. 21. s Ibid., pp. 31, 40. 

6 Ibid., pp. 15-18, 63-64; Guhrauer, I, 415. 



104 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

developing the meaning of this third type of justice it will be well to 
examine the sixth natural society where it is practiced. 

(5) The church as a natural society and the higher justice. — We have 
seen how Aquinas brought ethics down to the natural world. Leibniz 
calls the church a natural society. Its purpose is everlasting felicity. 
Its natural basis is in the desire implanted in every man for immortality, 
hence it would exist and be maintained and propagated by the pious and 
holy even without revelation. The latter, however, strengthens the 
bond uniting the universal church. 1 

Though Leibniz gives the city of God this unusual extension he often 
speaks of an inner circle, of active citizens we may say, constituting the 
kind of society into which we enter by deliberate choice. Its members 
freely co-operate with God for his glory which is identical with the 
public good. This invisible church is not identical with the visible 
church. It is catholic in the sense in which Leibniz once very emphati- 
cally asserted he was catholic, that is, it is free from obstinacy with 
respect to the resistance of truth and it is dominated by love to all 
mankind. "The mark of true catholicity is charity" — a charity which 
hesitates to condemn others whose life is pure but whose opinions differ 
from some particular standard. 2 For membership in this church the 
sacraments are not absolutely essential though their value as a means 
of grace is admitted. A simple ceremony is all that is needed, for reli- 
gion must not be conceived as consisting essentially in externalities. 
Neither is knowledge of revealed truth an absolute requirement since 
many infants and others who have not heard it are saved without it. 
Revelation however is worthy of the highest reverence, yet it is subject 
to the criterion of reason. The New Testament has changed the whole 
countenance of humanity and taught the laws of heaven, but just because 
Christ honored humanity by becoming man, every man should remem- 
ber his own dignity as man and keep the eyes of his understanding open. 

Those who belong to the true church are never malcontents in the 
universe, but trustful as to the final outcome. This is because of their 
faith in God whose presumptive will they are zealous in carrying out. 
Theirs is not patience par force like that of the Stoics but joyous resigna- 
tion, such as comes only when one has done his part. It is interesting 
to note that Leibniz really practiced this creed as is shown in a letter in 
which he admitted that a purpose to which he had devoted many years 
of effort had failed, but he remained confident that God would bring 

1 Gerhardt, VII, 511; Guhrauer, I, 415-19. 

2 Foucher, I, 143, quoted by Pichler. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 105 

it to success in later times. This purpose was that of uniting the 
various divisions in the Christian church. "Don't be a malcontent but 
work earnestly and hopefully" is a categorical imperative in the King- 
dom of Grace. 1 

In this true church hope and fear are not wholly absent, but when 
they are present they are not narrow and selfish. They are in connection 
with those larger goods desired by those who are animated by universal 
charity. The faith of this church may go beyond reason and demon- 
stration, but it is never contrary to reason and it must be founded on 
reason. Nothing gave Leibniz greater annoyance than the doctrine of 
the twofold truth especially that form of it which made the chief glory 
of faith to consist in its irrationality. In its doctrines this church guards 
carefully against anything which .would reflect on the goodness or 
justice of God, for it recognizes in the perfection of God the only ideal 
which has sufficient force to elevate mankind to a high degree of virtue. 2 

This high degree of virtue, to which the church seeks to attain but 
has as yet attained but imperfectly, is nothing other than the third type 
of justice, for in a dual sense justice is the universal virtue: (a) It 
extends to all rational beings, (b) All other virtues may be subsumed 
under it, and all motives be valued in accordance with its standard. In 
its light we may criticize the lower type of justice. 

The second type of justice was not sufficiently discriminating for it 
ignored moral defects in the individual which seemed from a superficial 
view not to concern the welfare of other persons, but which really mar 
the perfection of the whole and render the individual unfit to contribute 
to the public welfare. It was defective also in that it lacked that 
highest sanction of natural right which comes from the idea of God and 
immortality. The thought of an all-seeing eye and of a perfectly just 
judgment from which there is no escape affords a powerful stimulus 
in a world where both sins of omission and commission often remain 
undetected. Natural right expressed as law receives thereby an ad- 
ditional guaranty for a law in order to be a law in the strict sense must 
have compulsive force. Under the third type of justice the wise man 
now becomes "free to exercise his charity even upon his enemies," and 
the prudent man may voluntarily suffer torture and even death for the 
public welfare without being accounted foolish. In this last analysis 

'Pichler, Die Theologie des Leibniz, II, 17-18, 55; Mollat, pp. 38-39; Gerhardt, 
III, 218; VII, 122. " 

2 Mollat, p. 62; Gerhardt, III, 218; VI, 220-22; Guhrauer, II, 52; Pichler, 
II, 265. 



106 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

Leibniz finds his long-sought reconciliation of prudence and the higher 
type of justice, between the individual and society. 1 

The part played by immortality as a sanction of justice is very 
important. "Imperfect is the doctrine of morals, of justice, and of 
duties, which rests only on the goods of this life, and the doctrine of 
providence is useless if immortality of the soul is taken away." 2 Often 
Leibniz expresses the thought that the great majority of men are not 
sufficiently sensitive to the attractions of virtue to comply with the 
demands of justice without additional hope of reward or fear of punish- 
ment. This is not the only function which is assigned to the idea of 
immortality, but it is one which it is difficult to reconcile with the con- 
ception of justice as the charity of the wise man. We find however that 
Leibniz himself has clearly expressed another and quite different con- 
ception of the third type of justice. 3 

This second conception of the third type of justice makes its appeal 
neither to hope nor to fear, but rather to love and appreciation of 
perfection. Its influence is in the powerful but silent attractiveness of 
moral beauty. "We needs must love the highest when we see it" is a 
modern expression of Leibniz' thoughts 

The argument proceeds substantially as follows: When we con- 
template the goodness of God we perceive that his actions spring neither 
from hope of reward nor fear of penalty. God is his own reward, which 
means that his only reward is the pleasure springing from the harmony 
or perfection of his acts. In fact this is not a mere matter of tradition. 
If we look within we find our own nature demands that God should thus 
act. If we conceive a being so high above us that he does not need our 
aid or fear our enmity and ask ourselves how he ought to treat us, our 
only answer is "with the charity of the wise." Thus we demand justice 
from all above us and this demand is reflected back upon the wise man. 
He freely admits that he is under obligations to be just without considera- 
tions of reward or of punishment or at least in almost entire abstraction 
from them. It would however misrepresent Leibniz to say that men 
feel they are sternly compelled by reason to adopt this high standard of 
justice. By a feeling much like esthetic appreciation they are drawn 
toward it. This is pure disinterested love. Beholding the glory of 

1 Mollat, pp. 13, 39, 64, 89, 94-95- 
2 Gerhardt, VII, 511. 

J Mollat, pp. 6, 61, 94; Gerhardt, V, 186-87. 
« Mollat, p. 62. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 107 

God we become like him and strive to promote this glory which is 
identical with the highest public welfare. 1 

We have seen how the idea of transformation by beholding appeared 
in Aquinas and in Augustine, and still earlier in St. Paul, whose typical 
expression is, "We all with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory 
of God are transformed into the same image from glory to glory." Still 
earlier Plato spoke of a similar transforming power. Leibniz adds an 
illustration of a queen endowed with such graces and virtues that her 
charm rendered her subject loyal. In another place he states that 
"the perfection of God is in a sense transfused into us by knowing and 
loving him." 2 

From a somewhat different standpoint Leibniz discusses three 
motives of justice. 3 The first is our own advantage. We fear to injure 
others lest they seek revenge. We aid others hoping to receive again. 
The second is a sense of humanity and rectitude implanted in all men 
which inflicts certain natural penalties on us when we violate it. This 
penalty may take the form of dissatisfaction or of certain inner wounds 
and blows, quosdam laniatus et ictus. It is this same sense of humanity 
which makes us feel pain at another's loss and pleasure in his well 
deserved happiness. The third motive is religion. It comes in to solve 
the conflict between the first and second motives especially when there 
is little prospect of discovery and penalty from our fellows. The 
thought of a higher judge, omniscient and omnipotent, turns the scale 
in favor of the second motive. But the wise do not need to make this 
reconciliation. They already know virtue is its own reward since it 
produces the highest happiness. But even here religion is not quite 
reduced to virtue though it is said that A pud sapientes religio et honestas 
seu virtutis amor est idem. Religious faith, undisturbed confidence in 
the final outcome of things, still remains, and this to Leibniz is as essential 
to wholesome spiritual life as the heart's period of rest between its 
movement of contraction and relaxation is to its healthful functioning. 

The above may be interpreted developmentally, indeed Leibniz' 
conception that the first type of justice belongs to a rude state of nature 
makes this necessary. First the individual self recognizes others as 
means not as ends, but cannot be quite satisfied in doing so. Gradu- 
ally social interests gain a larger recognition, but at times of great stress 

'Leibniz' System of Theology, Russell's transl., p. 31; Mollat, pp. 59-60, 94; 
Gerhardt, VII, 547. - 

2 Mollat, pp. 17, 62. 3 Ibid., p. 88. 



108 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

the narrow individual self comes into conflict with a larger social self. 
The latter appeals to God as a higher social self for aid, and as a result the 
individual self moderates its claims but not without internal resistance. 

We may suppose continuous growth in the social self until the law 
with regard to other selves is considered internal, and willing obedience 
rendered. But the very fact that the self has become so much wider in 
its interests brings with it new hopes, new fears, new sorrows — just as 
the philanthropist feels more keenly the woe and degradation of those 
whom he tries to rescue than does the misanthrope. Belief in the 
co-operation of God here becomes a powerful factor, enabling man to 
work cheerfully and hopefully for the establishment of an ideal kingdom 
of ends in the actual world. Immortality suggests advance in that 
perfection which to the follower of the ideal is never realized here because 
of the rapid growth of ideals. In Leibniz' words "the wise would have 
no sufficient motive to seek their own perfection in so brief a life if it 
were not for immortality." 

Leibniz' concept of justice as charity is strongly suggestive of recent 
moral advance as well as of the great nineteenth century reforms. The 
obligation of the morally strong to help the weak is implied in it. It 
stands also for prevention rather than penalty, for love that uplifts and 
tries to understand, rather than hatred of the sinner and indifference to 
the causes of his sin. Our ideal of the divine love and divine justice have 
likewise undergone transformation. There is less despair of the great 
republic of souls, the Kingdom of Grace whose members may all become 
active, loyal, and efficient, when divine and human justice is conceived 
as the charity of the wise. The last element in the definition is as 
valuable as the first. It means that the old indiscriminate charity often 
working injury and injustice to those who receive it should be replaced 
by a none the less devoted but vastly more enlightened spirit of 
helpfulness. 

(6) The relation of the church to the state. — In early life Leibniz hoped 
to unite the various churches under one visible head, presumably the 
pope, but in a system very different from what had formerly existed. 
The need for some superior power which could act as court of arbitration 
among Christian peoples and direct them to concerted effort against 
external foes never seemed greater. Later on Leibniz spoke of this as 
desirable, and imaginable though not without a certain artistic endow- 
ment, but impossible to carry out. An early paper suggests another 
scheme for Christian peace. The new world was to be divided among 
the powers already contesting for it. The empire was to unite with 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 109 

Holland, Switzerland, and Italy and to go forth everywhere to maintain 
the peace. Some sort of union between the spiritual and the temporal 
power is presupposed. In general Leibniz represents the church as 
obedient to the state in matters temporal. 1 

V. THE OLD AND THE NEW CONTEMPLATION 

Leibniz always wished to do justice to earlier institutions and 
earlier theories and was inclined to criticize severely those who did 
not do so, but in recognizing the old he usually transforms it. In 
nothing is this more evident than in his treatment of the contempla- 
tive life and of monasticism as the only institution in which that life 
could be realized. 

The service of monasticism in preserving books and letters is freely 
admitted. So also is the possible social usefulness of a body of men free 
from family cares bound together for a noble purpose, "a sort of army 
of heaven upon earth." One element however must drop out of monas- 
ticism which was hitherto considered most vital. The indissolubility 
of vows must no longer be a precondition of such a life, for the novice 
cannot foresee what his real choice may be many years in advance. 
Much in the organization of the Jesuits appealed to Leibniz. He 
admired their splendid activity and their missionary zeal, but was 
fearful that this activity would take directions not the best for social 
advancement. Once he commends the superior scholarship of an order 
more devoted to the contemplative life. 2 

A second modification of monasticism was desirable. The con- 
templative life must be more specifically united with action. "It is an 
illusion to found the union of the soul with God on inaction since it is 
rather by frequent acts and exercises of divine virtue that we ought to 
maintain, to demonstrate and fortify the habit of those virtues which 
unite us to him." 3 Once Leibniz suggested a plan for the organization 
of study and of research of a very practical sort which assigned to each 
of the monastic orders a special field for scientific investigation. This 
was in harmony with his often emphasized view of meditation on the 
works of God in nature and in history as essential to piety. One cannot 
love God or glorify him without knowing his beauty, and true devotion 
consists largely in such contemplation of God and his works as have for 

1 Gerhardt, III, 306-11, 314; Klopp, III, 168, quoted by Pichler; Guhrauer, 
I, 201. 

2 Dutens, V, 93, quoted by Pichler; System of Theology, pp. 39-40. 

3 Gerhardt, II, 577. 



IIO A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

their end the practice of moral virtues. True devotion may also include 
simple ceremonies fitted to stimulate men to what is real in piety. 1 

Such contemplation of course is not to be limited to monks. It is 
essential to an ever advancing perfection, and perfection with Leibniz 
is not a matter of counsels. It is distinctly a matter of precepts, an 
obligation resting upon every Christian, no matter what his rank and 
occupation to strive with all powers of body and soul toward it. 

We have already seen how contemplation of the moral attributes of 
God becomes the transforming principle in the moral life producing a 
love for virtue which must manifest itself in the conduct of life. This, 
however, does not exclude the kind of contemplation described above 
but the rather implies it. 

A prolonged period of meditation on life and its meaning, especially 
on the problems of God, the soul, and felicity is recommended because 
it has often determined the life of an individual to virtue. A year of 
preliminary work on easier subjects is recommended. This determina- 
tion of attitudes which will be in general maintained through the future 
life is valuable in a high degree, but it must be supplemented by the 
habit of calling a halt at times to ask, "Why this rather than that?" 
"Whither am I tending?" etc. In general like Socrates and all great 
moral teachers Leibniz insisted that "the unexamined life is unworthy 
of any man." Leibniz in his early writings differentiated meditation 
from contemplation, by assigning to the former the more distinctly 
intellectual function, that is of determining what course of action one 
should adopt. Contemplation appeals rather to the will by exciting 
love for and consequently motivation to good deeds. He does not 
adhere to these principles of division at all closely and it is really not 
essential that he should do so since by his general psychological theory 
thought and volition are logically but not really separable phases of an 
ever on-going process. It can hardly be said that action exists for the 
sake of contemplation or contemplation for the sake of action exclu- 
sively, but that they are mutually contributory elements in one life 
process, logically separable but not separate aspects of the higher 
monad's activity. 2 

VI. FUTURE LIFE AND PROGRESS 

The whole Leibnizian system has no stronger motive than that of 
preserving belief in the immortality of the individual. The city of God 
must lose none of its citizens and all members of the kingdom of grace 

1 Gerhardt, III, 218. 2 Ibid., VII, 79; Pichler, I, 411. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE III 

must be afforded an opportunity for full self-realization, without hope of 
which the wise would hardly undertake to develop toward perfection. 1 

Leibniz accepts the doctrine of future rewards and punishments but 
not without great limitation, especially as to the number of those who 
receive punishment. It is by no means certain that the number of those 
lost is greater than that of the saved. Penalty cannot come upon the 
innocent. Infants are therefore exempt. Contemplation of nature and 
internal assistance may prepare many for eternal life who have not 
heard Christian teaching. Grace in the hour of death is suggested for 
others and it is recognized that many may be in the true church though 
not connected with any visible church. If some are hopelessly lost it is 
because the will continues stubborn. In any case they retain a formal 
freedom. 

The employments of the after life are not fully described, but as 
always life is activity. Souls reunited with God do not lose their 
particular functions. "The beatific vision of happy souls is compatible 
with the activities of glorified bodies." 2 The after life must not be 
conceived of as inactive and useless. That the soul must be united with 
a body is the presupposition of the whole monadology. 

Leibniz is by no means sure that existence is such a blessing that one 
would prefer the highest infelicity to annihilation. Existence in a 
state of indifference, if such were possible, would be preferable to 
non-existence. 3 

Progress in good is infinite, in evil finite. The beatific vision can 
never be fully complete, because God can never be fully known, hence 
there will be continual advance to new perfections. So far as the after 
life of the blessed is concerned there is always the emphatic assertion 
that it is one of perpetual progress. Leibniz saw the contradiction in- 
volved in the idea of progress in a world which is already the best possible. 
He gives several solutions. One is that change in kind of perfection may 
take place without change in degree which can be illustrated by the 
passing from a delightful auditory experience to a not less delightful one 
of the visual type. Another with which Leibniz himself is evidently 
dissatisfied is that diminution might take place in one part of the universe 
to balance the increase in others. A third is that the nature of the 
object is such that perfection cannot be attained at once. A fourth is 
an elaboration of the third. It says that perfection itself can be in- 
terpreted only as progressive change unending and unlimited. This 

1 Gerhardt, V, 60; Mollat, p. 17. 

3 Gerhardt, V, 52; VI, 536. J Ibid., I, 121. 



112 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

apotheosis of the idea of change is most strongly expressed in a quotation 
given by Cassirir from a manuscript in the library at Hanover. The 
main thoughts in this quotation are: The world continually increases in 
perfection. If it did not do so final cause would be lacking. The 
universe like plant and animals tends toward maturity; unlike them it 
knows neither old age nor limit of development. The divine being must 
feel something analogous to pleasure. There could be no pleasure, only 
stupor, if he should persist in the same state, however noble. Felicity 
demands perpetual progress to new pleasures and perfections. Though 
all things are, as it were, present in their unity to God their realization 
requires time. To bring it to pass all at once would exclude enriching 
change. To pass from a state to its equal would leave no goal in acting. 1 

VII. GENERAL CRITICISM OF LEIBNIZ' CONCEPTION 

(i) It is a serious defect in the metaphysical system of Leibniz that 
it seems to deny that free and effective interaction which is so essential 
to the members of a kingdom of ends. It is quite possible that the real 
kernel of Leibniz' meaning is that such free interaction is not explicable 
except in terms of the essential elements of a pre-established plan, that 
is to say in terms of intelligence and purpose, and that all interaction in 
the universe is meaningless except in relation to these categories. 

(2) It is also a defect in Leibniz that like Aquinas, though holding a 
most exalted conception of the representative character of rulers, he did 
not clearly grasp that the policy of a truly representative state is not 
something pre-existing in the minds of its best men nor an average 
gathered from the opinions of all, but really something born out of 
intimate social interaction in free discussion of needs and methods of 
meeting them. Both, however, were beyond their generation in desiring 
a general culture which would fit men better for such active citizenship. 

(3) Leibniz represented a distinct advance over his predecessors in 
the tremendous emphasis he placed upon attributing to the ideal founder 
of the kingdom of grace no such plans and determinations of the 
future of that kingdom as would throw a doubt upon the righteousness 
of its founder, who is also its pattern of virtue. 

(4) There is a similar advance over preceding opinions in Leibniz' 
clear cut statement that every individual whether born in bondage or 
freedom has a right to the kind of education that will fit him for freedom. 

1 Gerhardt, II, 136; III, 338; VI, 237, 606; Guhrauer, II, 36; Gerhardt, VII, 543; 
Cassirir, Leibniz' System, p. 444. 



LEIBNIZ AND THE KINGDOM OF GRACE 113 

(5) Another and kindred mark of progress is in the great emphasis 
which Leibniz places on moral education as a means whereby all may be 
prepared for active membership in a kingdom of ends. 

(6) It was an element of great worth in Leibniz' system that he saw 
in the scientific study of the industrial arts, and in a fuller knowledge of 
the abstract sciences with relation to these arts, a means of moral 
elevation for the higher classes of society, a bridging of the chasm 
between the classes, and also both the material and spiritual elevation 
of the lower classes. Thomas and Augustine are not without suggestions 
of this but their views are not clearly enunciated. 

(7) While no doubt the emphasis of both Augustine and Aquinas on 
contemplation has as a partial motive the development of the moral 
imagination it was a definite advance to show clearly as Leibniz did the 
need of a trained imagination in making moral decisions, since they are 
often made in complex situations when it is desirable that the worth of 
each contending element should be distinctly felt. 

(8) It was a distinct advance to give a clear recognition to natural 
right and law as a matter of evolution in which the higher stages take 
up elements of worth from the lower and at least aim to reject what has 
become worthless. Nor was it of less value to show discontent with 
the fact that incongruous elements have been carried over from a ruder 
state of nature and that in many respects what was originally intended 
for the necessary protection of the individual had become a barrier to 
the progress of society as a whole. This finds expression in Leibniz' 
dissatisfaction with property distribution, and his indirect effort to 
remedy the evil by state intervention and aid which would increase the 
material goods and the general culture of those upon whom the inequality 
of distribution falls most grievously. 

(9) To insist, as Leibniz did, that rulers should turn their attention 
toward the furthering of science and the development of internal resources 
rather than to external warfare and violence to one's political neighbors 
was suggestive of the general direction of future political progress, from 
which however it must be admitted there have been many backslidings. 

(10) It represented great progress in moral insight to see that the 
obligation to seek perfection with all the heart and soul and mind and 
strength rested not on the few who had taken specific vows as members 
of a monastic body but upon all men no matter what their position in life. 

(11) There is great development in bringing the contemplative life 
into the most intimate and effective relation to action, without losing 
the older element of value embodied in the thought of a real transfor. 



114 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

mation of spiritual life through visions of the ideal. Similarly it was of 
high practical value to identify, as Leibniz so frequently does, the glory 
of the divine being contemplated with the public welfare. 

(12) It was a work of great merit to attempt to turn the attention 
of the various churches away from destructive conflict toward active 
co-operation in every good work. Leibniz probably accomplished much 
less in this respect through published papers than through personal appeal 
and discussion with great political and religious leaders. The history is 
yet to be written, if indeed it can be written, which will show how much 
the influence of Leibniz contributed to prevent the recurrence of religious 
wars. It is also impossible to estimate how much Leibniz contributed 
by published theory and private effort to the transformation of German 
particularism into national patriotism, and the broadening of all national 
patriotism into universal citizenship. 

(13) It was a noble effort of Leibniz to attempt to bridge the chasm 
between the natural and supernatural without destroying the tran- 
scendence of ideal conceptions and the thought that the supreme reality 
must be interpreted as righteousness or goodness. 

(14) Greater even than Leibniz' prophetic insight into the value of 
science and scientific instruments as means of social advance, and 
greater because inclusive of this insight, is his conception of justice as 
the charity of the wise, blending as it does the necessary factors for 
effective social service, that is a real sympathy and desire to help others 
with an obligation to understand wherein they need help and how such 
help may best be given. 

(15) Last but not least in value in Leibniz' conception is his undying 
faith in progress. He is never content to maintain merely the status 
quo of the universe. Even when he tries to conserve older conceptions 
which he believed must be maintained as a basis to further progress he 
really gives them a new interpretation whether consciously or uncon- 
sciously. The representation of perfection as final goal loses its static 
character and takes on that of unending development. Pre-established 
harmony becomes rather an assertion of unbroken connection of all 
events in time than that of a hard and fast predetermined scheme of 
things admitting of no real change or progress. Such change, at least 
once Leibniz asserts, must be present in the divine life itself. Many 
times he implies it. 



CHAPTER V 

SUMMARY AND STATEMENT OF RELATION TO KANT 
I. PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS 

Stating the results of our investigation in very general terms we may 
say that it was Augustine's problem to restore the moral order seriously 
disturbed in his day by the rapidly progressing disintegration of the 
Roman empire and the downfall of the pagan religion. He solves it by 
presenting the Christian community as a universal state with indestruct- 
ible foundations — an eternal city of God over against Rome as eternal 
city and center of world-empire. The Christian faith is set forth as a 
deeper and truer bond of unity than the older religion. His advance over 
previous systems consisted (i) in the larger recognition which he gives 
to the whole nature of man, (2) in his better provision for realization of 
ideals through a well organized society, (3) in the wider future outlook 
for the development of the human spirit, (4) in his more concrete state- 
ment of the worth of man as man. His system is inadequate mainly in 
that in his attempt to make his ideal city eternal he crushes out essential 
elements of progress (1) by practically denying the possibility of freedom 
to will the good, (2) by limiting possible membership in a kingdom of 
ends in accordance with eternal decrees of a very arbitrary character, 
(3) by suppression of freedom of thought in order to repress heresy, (4) 
by overemphasis on asceticism as contributory to the social good. 

Aquinas had to deal with serious disturbances in the moral order due 
(1) to the breaking down of the German-Roman empire, (2) to the 
disintegration of the feudal order and consequent rise of new political 
states and commercial interests with an as yet undeveloped technique 
of control, (3) to the intellectual unrest especially prevalent in university 
centers calling for a new statement of religious and moral conceptions, 
and for a better organized philosophy. His solution took the form of a 
large recognition of social interests resting on a natural basis, by showing 
that such interests were perfectly legitimate within a given sphere, but 
that they must be kept subordinate to eternal interests, hence positive 
law must be regarded as less authoritative than revealed law, and the 
political state than the universal church. He also succeeded to a great 
extent in reconciling conflicts within earlier expressions of the Christian 
faith and in organizing theology into a system which, from the standpoint 

115 



Il6 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

of his time, was formally perfect. Free use was made of Aristotle to 
supply necessary ethical, political, and philosophical conceptions though 
not without modification. The value of Aquinas' solution consists 
mainly in the greater concreteness of his conception of the universal 
church through a more generous recognition of the worth of political 
and social institutions and of natural moral tendencies. There is also 
a distinct decrease in the number of those shut out from participation 
in eternal good. The main defects are (i) too great emphasis on elements 
which have but a symbolic value, (2) exaltation of the contemplative life 
as the ideal life, (3) exclusion of reconstructive influence through a static 
conception of dogma and custom as infallible. 

Leibniz tried to remove abnormal elements from the moral order 
arising through a mechanical interpretation of the universe by both 
philosophers and physicists, through political strife, harsh legalism, and 
general governmental inefficiency, and through religious strife and 
narrowness. Against the claims of mechanism he asserted that the real 
meaning of the universe is to be found in terms of conscious life, and in 
the feelings and purposes involved therein. The kingdom of nature, 
however, is given an exalted place as the means through which to a great 
extent the kingdom of grace must be realized. Against political strife 
and commercial greed he asserts that the individual state must find 
enlargement by means of internal development and friendly co-operation 
with other states. Against a harsh legalism on the one hand and an 
unwise benevolence on the other he proclaimed the identity of love and 
justice. Against religious strife he preached a gospel of mutual tolerance 
and co-operation in well doing. The two main defects in his conception 
are (1) the denial in his metaphysics of interaction between members of 
the kingdom of grace, and (2) the limitation of active citizenship in the 
political state to the few. 

II. GENERAL ADVANCE 

On the whole there is a marked development in the conception of a 
kingdom of ends from Augustine through Aquinas and Leibniz: (1) 
From the metaphysical standpoint: The world plan inclusive of man's 
place in it with respect to his relations both to higher and lower beings 
not only makes possible but positively demands a wider extension of 
active membership in a kingdom of ends. (2) From the standpoint of 
the psychology of ethics: Man's psychical nature is so conceived that 
active membership in a kingdom of ends becomes possible, not merely 
for the select few but for all. There is also a clear conception that every 



SUMMARY AND STATEMENT OF RELATION TO KANT 1 1 7 

individual both can and ought to be educated for free and active citizen- 
ship in the moral realm. Inner conflict in man's nature is recognized, 
and is made the basis of all intellectual and moral advance, but over and 
above the conflict there is reconciliation, co-operation, progress. (3) From 
the standpoint of the moral order as expressing itself in social institu- 
tions and instrumentalities: In the more complete subordination of 
existing societies to the general welfare, both by the elimination of 
hurtful activities and in the assignment of wholesome functions. There 
is also a fairly clear conception that the meaning of law and of natural 
right will be found not so much by going back to an immemorial past to 
find their origin as in regarding them as demands upon the future for a 
fuller and freer self-realization. 

III. RELATION OF EARLIER CONCEPTIONS TO THAT OF KANT 

The phrase "kingdom of ends" was first used by Kant but many of 
the elements entering into his conception were known to Augustine, 
Aquinas, and Leibniz. In fact the theories of all, if stated in general 
terms, would seem practically identical. An effort to understand what 
was meant more specifically reveals striking differences. We will now 
examine some of the points of likeness and difference, without stating 
the historic situation which gave occasion for the latter. 

(1) All agree in regard to the fundamental law of the kingdom of 
ends expressed in the thought that every man must be regarded as an 
end in himself and never as merely a means. This dignity attaches to 
him because he is a rational being. The obligation rests upon every 
human being to observe this law. The divine being observes it not 
because of obligation but because of his holy character. 

Kant's enunciation of the principle of the kingdom of ends is clearer 
and stronger than that of the writers previously considered. It also 
places vastly more emphasis on the need of applying the principle in 
every institution of social and political life. It is a stern demand for 
the freedom of the individual everywhere, a philosophic appeal for 
liberty, equality, and fraternity of a universal sort. Distinguished 
scholars have attributed tremendous efficacy to it in bringing ameliora- 
tion to the oppressed both in Europe and America. To what extent it 
has been an epoch-making ideal need not be determined here, but it 
certainly stands today as one of the noblest formulations of human 
worth ever proclaimed. It finds, as Kant had hoped, "an entrance to 
feeling and intuition." Perhaps he suspected it found too free an 
entrance to be quite consistent with his general theory. His use of the 



Il8 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

conception is indeed not limited to his use of the phrase as he employs 
all other equivalent phrases previously mentioned in our study, but he 
does not use the conception as freely as its worth demands, or as his 
early announcement of it as "very fruitful" would lead us to expect. 
Emphasis is placed on the necessity of making practical maxims conform 
to a universal law and on the self-legislative character of reason rather 
than on the less abstract conception of man as a living member of a 
social organism. 

(2) Kant's faith in the final realization of a kingdom of ends is not 
less profound than that of the three authors previously treated, but it is 
in several respects very different. He claimed that it rested neither on 
revelation nor church dogma. It was not an infused faith but primarily 
a moral faith prized highly because of its efficacy in setting free activities 
which are well able to justify it. Such is Kant's "will to believe." 
Like his predecessors he estimated its worth in the development of moral 
character very highly for without the "venture of faith" there can be 
no moral advance. The self-legislative reason demands that we strive 
to the utmost to realize the highest purpose. To deny the possibility 
of such realization is to make obedience to the noblest and most authori- 
tative command of reason irrational, since one cannot voluntarily put 
forth effort to realize that which he deems impossible. Man becomes 
conscious of a call to constitute himself a citizen of a better world, and 
this call comes to him as a mighty, irresistible proof of that world's 
existence. 

The argument from man's moral nature is ever with Kant the only 
sufficient basis for faith but he also recognizes two others as of some 
worth. Adaptation to ends, especially prevalent in the organic world, 
while not affording infallible proof for the existence of an intelligent 
world, would yet strongly suggest it. From the realm of esthetic feeling, 
too, there comes a suggestion that the marvelous adaptation of nature 
objects to our minds implies a close relation between the worlds of 
nature and of reason. 

(3) Kant emphasizes as strongly as Augustine a dualism in human 
nature which makes the moral life one of unending conflict and renders 
the development of a desirable moral order among men difficult, but he 
gives the radical evil in man's nature a different meaning especially with 
respect to its origin. Hereditary transmission he deems the poorest of 
explanations, conflicting as it does with freedom and responsibility. 
Natural instincts and sense appetites are in themselves right and proper 
when subordinated to the legislative reason, but that they are not 



SUMMARY AND STATEMENT OF RELATION TO KANT 119 

always so subordinated the history of the race and the individual's own 
conscience testify, thus invalidating the teaching of Seneca and Rousseau 
that man is naturally good. The proneness to fail to bring about such 
subordination is the "bias toward evil." We cannot go back in memory 
to a time when it did not exist, hence the tendency to call it connate, but 
this is illegitimate. We cannot suppose a taint in the legislative reason. 
We must then attribute the evil bias to the free act of the individual, 
however inscrutable such an act may be in a free person who hears the 
authoritative voice of legislative reason, and has no previous taint of 
corruption. The effort to locate such an act of the noumenal self at a 
point in time must prove unavailing. That the consciousness of moral 
evil might be a necessary result of the movement away from animality 
and of the birth of ideals both Kant and Augustine saw at least faintly 
in the case of the child. In the case of the race it is not wholly foreign 
to Kant. With both man's choice of evil meant a defect of the will not 
its freedom, and is admittedly inexplicable. 

Kant's radical evil is far from the total depravity of Augustine. 
The voice of legislative reason is heard and to some extent reverenced 
by even the most depraved, and the supposition both in morals and in 
law must be that no previous evil environment or commission of evil 
deeds can render the wrongdoer unable to turn and become a better man, 
or excuse his continuance in wickedness. However inscrutable the change 
may be man ought to become better, hence he can. The readjustment of 
the moral nature is by means of one inflexible act of determination which 
retroverts the perverted bias of the will and puts the practical maxims 
in their proper order. Without it we are in the stage of legality not 
morality, and our virtues, though not as Augustine claimed only "shining 
sins," are "dazzling frailties." In the Anthropology this thorough- 
going moral reconstruction, whose effects are by no means all immediately 
evident, is said to take place but rarely before the thirtieth year, and 
establishment in it even more rarely before the fortieth. This is 
Kant's philosophic counterpart of religious conversion. For bringing it 
about man's unaided will is sufficient. Like the religious conversion it 
does not mean total destruction of the radical evil, hence the dualism 
remains. Strictly speaking, with the renewal of the moral life the con- 
sciousness of it becomes intensified. 

(4) Aquinas and Leibniz had far less difficulty than Kant in rational- 
izing the natural appetites and emotions and turning them to good use. 
With Aquinas pleasure is never the motive of the moral act but it 
accompanies it as a consequence. Leibniz seemed to grow away from 



120 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

the tendency to make it the only motive, but he thought men were 
possessors of a moral sense which felt the beauty and attractiveness of 
goodness and which could be developed so that right doing would be 
the greatest joy, and evil a repulsive thing. Such development is 
synonymous with that of the good will. With Kant the good will 
stood in lonely supremacy. The volition alone, not the preceding, 
accompanying, or resultant feeling, is of importance. Positive pleasure 
may follow a good deed, and the negative feeling of freedom from 
blame or consciousness of having done one's duty does follow. But 
this is not pleasure, and it may be accompanied by intense pain. Pleas- 
ure can never precede the good deed as motive, else the deed would 
cease to be good. The co-operation of any feeling when the maxim is 
being determined is dangerous, for feeling can never serve as a standard 
of action to a rational being. 

There is for Kant one feeling which seems to bridge the moral chasm 
between the mundus intelligibilis and the mundus sensibilis much as 
did the time schema between categories and sense intuitions. It is the 
feeling of reverence or respect for the moral law, which as feeling must be 
sensuous, but as produced by the legislative reason is noumenal in its 
origin, and trails clouds of glory with it. Moral interest and appreciation 
are but variations of it. At times Kant represents this feeling quite 
negatively and as far removed from pleasure, for instance when it 
humiliates human conceit and neutralizes the attractions of sense. It 
gains a more positive content when represented as the result of con- 
templation of the marvelous moral law within us, the expression of the 
true self, the homo noumenon, for Kant too is not without a beatific 
vision which ever becomes more wonderful. This respect is not the 
force primarily which makes the moral law work, but the indication that 
it is working. When classed as the proper spring of action, or the 
subjective spring of the will, it seems to represent a necessary stage in 
the activity. Kant's various expressions concerning it are hard to 
reconcile but it is certain that the noumenal self acts upon the sensibility 
in producing it. 

(4) Augustine and Aquinas believed the bond that held the moral 
realm together to be love of God and one's neighbor. Leibniz held it to 
be universal justice or the love of the wise man. Here feeling and 
reason supplement and correct each other. Kant, at least in the classical 
period, in solemn scorn of feeling holds reason to be the only universal 
bond, for feeling cannot give universality. He was long in coming to 
this conclusion, and it seems to the writer, that he forsook it later though 



SUMMARY AND STATEMENT OF RELATION TO KANT 121 

perhaps never fully conscious that he had done so. Before adopting his 
classical standpoint he passed through practically every theory which 
he rejected later except that of the crudest hedonism. In 1763 he 
asserted that love toward one's neighbor exists in the heart of every man 
as a positive impulse or force which must be overcome before one can 
do him wrong or wilfully refuse to give him needed aid. In 1764 he 
tried to bring the feelings of sympathy and courtesy under the limitation 
of a more general feeling, since they need guidance and restraint " though 
like true virtue they involve immediate pleasure in good acts." The 
limiting principle, he says, must not be a speculative rule but the con- 
sciousness of a feeling that lives in every human heart. The feeling, he 
concludes, is that of the beauty and dignity of human nature. "If it 
had a perfect development in any human heart its possessor would love 
and treasure himself only in so far as he was one among all of those to 
whom his broad and noble feeling extended." Here we have an early 
statement of a kingdom of ends, though the phrase is not used, and feeling 
is declared to be its bond. The conception is quite Leibnizian but it 
probably connects genetically with Rousseau and Shaftesbury. During 
the same year Kant tried to connect Wolff's universal rule, "Do the 
most perfect deed you can," with immediate practical principles express- 
ing an intuitive and unanalyzable perception of the good. In 1765 the 
investigations of Hume, Hutcheson, and Shaftesbury into the basis of 
morality were said to be the best yet made, but incomplete. In 1770 
Shaftesbury was rejected as following Epicurus from afar, and the 
conclusion is reached that the intellect must be the basis of the moral 
judgment. Three years later Kant's question was how to give the 
rational principle of morality, now sharply separated from feeling, the 
proper leverage on the will. In papers undated but presumably near 
or in this period of struggle several ideas are brought out. 1 In one there 
is an effort to make the essence of happiness intellectual — a feeling of 
contentment because one can do without pleasure and even endure ills 
in undisturbed serenity. In another a man who is tempted to lie 
overthrows the objections offered by representatives of various moral 
theories, but when he looks within his own heart honestly he finds a 
strong sense of disapproval and horror at the thought of the deed. 
Kant interprets this feeling as springing from an a-priori law which 
brings the will into unity and harmony, and also brings, if obeyed, 
contentment with self which is the condition of all happiness. In one 
of these papers "worthy to be happy" is defined as worthiness to come 

1 Reicke, I, 9-14, 250. 



122 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

into possession of every means by which one can bring about his own 
and others' happiness. It applies to the man whose choice is independ- 
ent of sense constraint. 

It is evident to one who tries to apply the principle of thinking of 
others as ends not merely means that feeling, consideration of conse- 
quences, and other elements which in accordance with the Kantian 
psychology ought not to appear really do appear, scarcely less strikingly 
so than when one tries to apply the golden rule, or any other standard 
which puts us in position to get at the moral value of a contemplated 
act. The insufficiency of the Kantian psychology of ethics in the 
isolation of the law giving reason from feeling and experience and the 
fact that he must have ignored it or else have outgrown it appears 
especially as we shall see in his treatment of social institutions and 
agencies for the furtherance of the moral realm. 

Very noticeable is Kant's failure to give full value to the feeling of 
sympathy. He admits that it is peculiar to humanity, and his categorical 
command to respect the humanity within ourselves and within others 
would seem to demand its larger recognition. Not even after he passes 
from the view of an isolated self determining itself by a-priori laws 
independent of experience to that of a self whose duty it is to unite with 
others to further the moral advance of all, and the development of a 
state whose constitution is to become possible only through the widest 
experience, does he do full justice to this feeling. 

(5) Kant has marked superiority over his predecessors in dealing 
with the concept of freedom. For him it is the center of interest. The 
Critique of Pure Reason is worked out to remove obstacles to belief 
in it. Its inexplicability he admits, but he assumes it must be true, for 
moral action cannot go on without it. In order to preserve the individ- 
ual's independence neither God nor one's fellow-man is allowed to enter 
into the inner sanctuary of the will either to help or to hinder in deter- 
mining it toward righteousness. That individual independence was 
overemphasized in the classical period is evident, but never was there a 
better historic justification for taking too extreme a view, nor does the 
history of philosophy show anything more heroic than the strong and 
persistent effort of this physically fragile man to make a way for liberty. 

(6) The Kantian conception of education is the noblest yet studied. 
Youth should be educated for progress, not merely to maintain the 
status quo. State controlled education is likely to have the narrow aim 
of making good citizens of the state instead of fitting the child for world- 
citizenship in the largest sense. The need of scientific method in 



SUMMARY AND STATEMENT OF RELATION TO KANT 1 23 

education is recognized. The normal school cannot give the proper 
method until it has been determined by experimentation. Acquisition 
of knowledge and skill are important but moral education more so. 
Good habits are not enough, for they break down under stress. Maxims 
of conduct should be developed. An hour a day might well be devoted 
to the study of the rights of men, "that apple of God's eye." The child 
should not be overstimulated but quietly led to an appreciation of 
disinterested devotion to principle, a capacity for which is in every 
nature. Religious teaching should follow the moral and be essentially 
moral in content. Love for others and even cosmopolitan sentiments 
are to be developed. Evidently Kant would have the educator labor 
not merely for the happiness of the child but for its perfection also in 
spite of his formal denial of man's moral duty to do so. 

(7) From Augustine to Kant the moral worth of the political state 
is increasingly recognized. Both attributed its origin to egoistic 
impulses. Kant thought a social state must have preceded the civil 
state. He did not fully reach Leibniz' view that unless there were 
already some degree of confidence men would not enter into a compact 
to form a civil state. This compact was not regarded by Kant as a 
historic event, but as a rational norm expressing the thought that the 
fundamental law and also all later laws should be such as would harmo- 
nize with the general will. Freedom is the great central principle of the 
state. All other rights and duties spring from it hence the ideal form of 
the state is the republic though the spirit of representative government 
may exist in a monarchy or in an aristocracy. In the ideal state neither 
rank nor degradation can be inherited not even where the former is 
originally given as a reward to virtue or the latter as a penalty for 
wrongdoing. Even the child of the slave is born free. Children are 
potentially active citizens of the state and should be educated for 
freedom. The word potentially must be used here in a unique sense 
by Kant with regard to the female child since she remains in perpetual 
minority both in "business and thinking." Yet Kant repeatedly states 
that a paternal government is despotic, and once he terms it the worst 
form of despotism. 1 In his treatise on education he neglects the educa- 
tion of woman for freedom. He thought that perhaps education might 
improve her disposition but hesitated to prescribe any plan for it since 
"as yet there is no scheme for it in harmony with the destiny of her 
sex." How he obtained knowledge as to what this destiny is he did not 
state. Yet despite this narrow view of half of the race the sage of 

1 Reflexionen, II, 109. 



124 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

Konigsberg was a true prophet of freedom, and far bolder and more 
persistent in proclaiming the doom of many forms of bondage than his 
predecessors. Though he left men who sold their labor rather than its 
products as passive citizens because of their dependent position, he 
hated the idea of passive citizenship for men and saw its contradictory 
nature. His hope was that all these evils must end and to philosophy 
he assigned the task of furnishing guiding principles whereby this end 
should be hastened. 

(8) Kant, in striking contrast with Augustine and Aquinas, regarded 
freedom of speech as essential to social and political health. This is his 
trusted means of bringing about every reform. Revolt against the 
administration of government he regarded as anarchical, not clearly 
seeing that before a successful revolt can be carried out the essential 
elements of a new state must have already come into being. 

(9) With Augustine and Aquinas realization of the kingdom of ends 
could come only through revealed religion and the mediation of the 
church. With Leibniz salvation is possible without revelation and the 
aid of the historic church, but revealed religion coincides with the natural. 
With Kant the visible historic church is valuable only in so far as it 
disseminates a pure morality. Its ceremonies may by their symbolism 
render moral truth more impressive but there is very great danger that 
the symbol will be taken for the thing symbolized and thus idolatry 
flourish under the name of religion. Kant was very emphatic in his 
praise of the morality inculcated by the Bible. The use of the Bible as 
a popular book he regarded as of inestimable worth. Its records of 
historical events are not to be taken literally, but as symbolic of great 
spiritual truths. No statement of doctrinal belief is to be taken as final 
and made binding upon the coming generations, since new interpretations 
of religious truth are always necessary. 

Kant's idea of God and of duties toward him differs widely from those 
of Augustine and Aquinas. With him there are no specific duties to 
God that are not duties to our fellow-men, but all duties are to be con- 
ceived as divine commands and here morality becomes religion. It is 
not easy to see how the voice of duty could gain impressiveness from 
conceiving it to be the voice of God when we examine Kant's idea of 
God, especially where he speaks of him as hypostatized idea or per- 
sonification of the moral law but Kant evidently thought that it did so. 1 
The inner judgment of conscience is delivered in a tone not our own, 

1 Reicke, Lose Blatter aus Kant's Nachlass, II, 151-53, 184, 238; III, 77; Harten- 
stein, VI, 277; Preface to Critique of Practical Reason. 



SUMMARY AND STATEMENT OF RELATION TO KANT 1 25 

hence he thinks there is a natural reason for assuming a personal law- 
giver. It also gives a foundation for hope of a successful outcome of 
the moral struggle. Kant too though seeming to deny any interaction 
between the divine being and man yet commends the belief that divine 
goodness will supply any deficiency in our moral service if we have 
really exerted ourselves to our utmost. With Kant as with Leibniz 
bringing God into the moral life meant a deepening and expansion of it, 
though he seemed to deny that personal relation which the religious 
consciousness demands. 

It might seem that the mediation of the church was entirely super- 
fluous since the individual has an infallible law within himself and also 
strength to obey it. Besides no one can aid him directly in his moral 
advance. Kant's later writings present a different view. A very 
important function is assigned to the church, or city of God, or ethical 
state. Men tempt each other and the only way to neutralize destructive 
social influences is to organize an ethical society for the promotion of 
moral ends. It is one's duty to enter into such a society for mutual 
stimulation to righteousness. That the church in his day was perform- 
ing this function poorly was Kant's strong conviction. 

' (10) Kant, like all writers previously studied, felt that unless there 
were a life after death there would be a natural desiderium. One of 
his arguments for such a life is the incompleteness of the moral develop- 
ment, the noblest of all tasks, in the present life. Another is the 
imperfect adjustment of happiness to worthiness in this life. With the 
sensuous meaning which Kant attached to happiness in some of his 
works it is hard to see how there can be happiness hereafter. The nature 
of the after life Kant did not attempt to define beyond what has been 
implied. In his early writings there is a description of a beatific vision 
of the distinctly intellectualistic type, but this could not have been his 
conception after he reached the conclusion that moral values were 
supreme. 

(n) Kant definitely excludes none from participation in the final 
good though he does not explicitly admit all. We have seen in the 
writers studied a constant tendency to widen the sphere of the kingdom 
of ends. 

(12) Aquinas and Leibniz both wished for an organization of broader 
scope than the existing state in order to secure peace and unity. Kant 
had a similar wish^ and, without rejecting the idea of the heavenly city 
as celestial, in a sense he brings it down to earth as the cosmopolitical 
state in which the race shall attain physical, mental, and moral per- 



126 A KINGDOM OF ENDS IN AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, AND LEIBNIZ 

fection. Kant did not find in experience sufficient evidence to compel 
us to believe in the coming of such a state, but there are already sugges- 
tions of its possibility in the remote future and it is our duty to believe 
in such a fortunate outcome for the race since it is our duty to 
work for it. The real obstacle to its coming is not without but within 
us in the cowardly, lying principle which refuses to believe in or hasten 
its coming. This doctrine of the coming of the ideal state is called the 
philosopher's millenial view, an ideal which will further its own realiza- 
tion. Until such a state is established the existing states will be cor- 
rupted by wars, their internal development hindered, their resources 
wasted, and the education of their citizens neglected. 

(13) We have seen how powerful a conflict Kant believed to exist 
between nature and reason, the mundus sensibilis and the mundus 
intelligibilis . We have seen how Leibniz made evil a moment in the 
development of the good. Kant adopts a similar plan. Kant had at 
one time looked upon contentment or satisfaction as the first condition 
of happiness. In the Anthropology as if correcting his earlier view he 
denies that contentment is possible in a human life. Without Schmerz 
or some spur we should fall into mental stupidity and fail of a true 
development. Kant finally seized upon this principle of conflict as the 
most important element in progress. Man who cannot live without his 
fellow-men can scarcely live with them. Nature uses these inborn an- 
tagonisms to develop man's power. Already she has civilized him, but 
only imperfectly moralized him. As the evils of a social state without a 
political constitution drive men to form a civil state, so also the evils 
of war will drive the various political states into a confederation which 
later will develop into the true cosmopolitical state. It is ours to work 
for the perfect race which is yet to be but Nature is doing more than we 
can do. 

Thus Kant built up his ideal state through opposing forces much 
as in earlier years he conceived the formation of physical worlds. In 
this ideal state antagonism does not die but lower forms of it yield to 
higher and all are stimulated thereby to their highest development, 
while at the same time the freedom of all is preserved. Thus the king- 
dom of nature serves the kingdom of grace by resisting it. Thus the 
self which in earlier times was left in majestic loneliness to work out 
its own salvation is conceived of as reaching higher stages through influ- 
ences coming from both the physical and the social environment, that 
of the two worlds whose unity is really deeper than their antagonism. 



SUMMARY AND STATEMENT OF RELATION TO KANT 1 27 

That there is purpose back of all this evolutionary movement and 
expressed through all of it is implied constantly. 

We have followed the development of the conception of an ideal 
organization through a period of fourteen hundred years as reflected 
in the views of four great thinkers, and we have seen that there is a real 
development from the standpoints of both extension and intension. 
Especially noticeable is the increase of faith that an approximation of 
this ideal may be reached on earth. Men who pray for the coming of 
the kingdom of heaven on earth have been loth to believe in its possibility, 
but faith in it has never wholly failed and is rapidly increasing. Along 
with this comes effort to bring blessings upon generations yet to be. 
Our hope is strengthened by the fact that we need no longer regard 
evolution even in lower forms of life as limited to progress by infinitesimal 
stages, and also by the fact that struggle and conflict, important as they 
are, are by no means the only explanatory principles. In human nature 
there are elements suggestive of the golden rule as well as of the iron 
rule. 

It may be asked why we tend to conceive of life in the golden age of 
the future as this intimate social relation within ever enlarging groups. 
McDougall explains the turning of the multitudes toward the earthly 
city as the development of a primitive gregarious instinct stronger even 
in higher animals than physical welfare demands. Whatever its origin 
the social character of the self is shown in this longing for full and perfect 
social relations, hence the city in the skies or one coming down from it, 
that is one created by the influence of a noble ideal, has always played 
an important part in human life, and probably will continue to do so. 
Today it is manifested in the ever growing demand for better social 
conditions, and in the courageous spirit with which men labor for social 
advance, well expressed by Kant's quotation from Vergil: Tu ne cede 
malis sed contra audentior ito. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

A. AUGUSTINE 

The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vols. I-VIII. New York, 

1886-88. 
Augustini Opera Omnia, Benedictine Edition. Paris, 1836-39. 
Reuter, Augustinische Studien. Gotha, 1887. 
Harnack, History of Dogma, Vols. V and VI. Translation. 
Long, Discourses of Epictetus. London, 1906. 
Taylor, Select Works of Plotinus. London, 1895. 
Long, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. London, 1901. 
Seneca, De otio; Epistolae morales. 

Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire. London, 1899. 
Taylor, Classical Heritage of the Middle Age. 
Thatcher and Schwill, The Middle Age. 
Bakewell, Source Book in Ancient Philosophy. 
Holme, Churches in North Africa. 

B. AQUINAS 

S. Thorn. Aquinatis summa theologica, Vols. I-VI. Turin, 1901. 

Aquinas, Summa de veritate Catholicae fidei contra Gentiles. Rome, 1878. 

Abert, Thomae v. Aquin compendium theologiae. Wurzburg, 1896. 

Rickaby, Aquinas ethicus, Vols. I and II. London, 1896. 

Baumann, Die Staatslehre des heiligen Thomas von Aquino. Leipzig, 1873. 

Werner, Thomas von Aquino, Vols. I— III. Regensburg, 1858. 

Rietter, Die Moral des heiligen Thomas von Aquino. Miinchen, 1838. 

Bluntschli, Geschichte der Staatswissenschaft; Bd. I. Miinchen, 1867. 

Adams, Civilization during the Middle Age. New York, 1895. 

Fisher, The German Empire and Papacy. 

Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. I. 

Dunning, A History of Political Theories Ancient and Medieval. New York> 

1902. 
Tout, Empire and Papacy. London, 1903. 

Poole, Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought. London, 1884. 
Maitland, Translation of Gierke's "Political Theories of the Middle Ages." 

Cambridge, 1900; London, 1898. 

C. LEIBNIZ 

Gerhardt, Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Bde. 

I-VII. Berlin, 1875-90. 
Mollat, Leibniz' Ungedruckten Schriften. Leipzig, 1893. 

128 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 120. 

Guhrauer, Leibniz' Deutsche Schriften, 2 Bde. Berlin, 1838-40. 

Stein, Leibniz und Spinoza. Berlin, 1890. 

Russell, System of Theology, a Translation of Leibniz 1 "Systema Theologicum." 

London, 1850. 
Pichler, Die Theologie des Leibniz, Bde. I-II. Miinchen, 1870. 
Latta, Leibniz' Monadology, etc. Oxford, 1898. 
Russell, Philosophy of Leibniz. Cambridge, 1900. 
Langley, New Essays. New York and London, 1896. 
Duncan, The Philosophy of Leibniz. 

Dewey, Leibniz. Griggs' Philosophical Classics. Chicago, 1888. 
Merz, Leibniz. Edinburgh and London, 1884. 
Bluntschli, Geschichte des allgemeinen Statsrechts. Miinchen, 1867. 

D. KANT 

Hartenstein, Kant's Werke, Bde. I-VIII. Leipzig, 1867. 

Hagerstrom, Kant's Ethik. Upsala, 1902. 

Paulsen, Immanuel Kant. 

Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. 

Reicke, Lose Blatter aus Kant's Nachlass, Bde. I-III. Konigsberg, 1898. 

Erdmann, Kant's Reflexionen. 

Bernard, Kant's Critique of Judgment. 

Abbott, Kant's Theory of Ethics. 



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